[TTttt 


^E^^^m^^^^^ III 


^iuli 




[HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 








*T 






* 


* 


L 






Hook _^^L^_j3 



HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE 

No. 24 

Editors : 

HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. 
Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, Litt.D., 

LL.D., F.B.A. 
Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A. 
Prof. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A. 



THE HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE 

VOLUMES NOW READY 

HISTORY OF WAR AND PEACE . G. H. Pebbis 

POLAR EXPLORATION Db.W.S.Bbuce,LL.D.,F.R.S.E. 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION . . . Hilaibe Belloo, M.A. 
THE STOCK EXCHANGE : A Shobt 
Study op Investment and Speculation F. W. HrasT 

IRISH NATIONALITY Alice Stoppobd G-reen 

THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT ... J. Ramsay MacDonald, M.P. 
PARLIAMENT : Its Histoby, Constitu- 
tion, and Pbacticb Sib Coubtenay Ilbebt, K.C.B., 

K.C.S.I. 

MODERN GEOGRAPHY Mabion I. Newbioin, D. Sc. 

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE .... John Masefebld. 

THE EVOLUTION OF PLANTS . . D. H.Scott,M.A.,LL.D.,F.R.S. 

THE OPENING-UP OF AFRICA . . SmE. H. Johnston, G.C.M.G., 

K.C.B., D.Sc., F.Z.S. 

MEDIEVAL EUROPE H. W. C. Davis, M.A. 

THE SCIENCE OF WEALTH ... J. A. Hobson, M.A. 
INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICS A. N. Whitehead, Sc.D. F.R.S. 

THE ANIMAL WORLD F. W. Gamble, D.Sc, F.R.S. 

EVOLUTION J. Abthur Thomson, M.A., and 

Patbick Geddes, M.A. 

LIBERALISM L. T. Hobhouse, M.A. 

CRIME AND INSANITY Db. C. A. Mebodsb, F.R.C.P., 

F.R.C.S. 

THE CIVIL WAR Fbedebic L. Paxson, Ph.D. 

THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA . . H. A. Giles, M.A., LL.D. 
HISTORY OF OUR TIME, 1885-1911 . G. P. Gooch, M.A. 
ENGLISH LITERATURE : MODERN . George Mak, M.A. 

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH W. F. Barrett, F.R.S. 

THE DAWN OF HISTORY .... J. L. Myres, M.A., F.S.A. 
ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH LAW . . W. M. Geldabt, M.A., B.C.L. 

ASTRONOMY A. R. Hinks, M.A. 

INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE ... J. Abthur Thomson 
THE PAPACY AND MODERN TIMES Rev. Dr. William Babby 
THE EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRY . D. H. Macgbeoob, M.A. 

*** Other volumes in active preparation. List on request 



PSYCHICAL 
RESEARCH 



BY 
W. F. BARRETT, F.R.S. 

PROFESSOR OF EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICS IN THE 

ROYAL COLLEGE OF SCIENCE FOR 

IRELAND, 1 873-I91O 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

LONDON 

WILLIAMS AND NORGATE 



/ - ! ! 



BFio2S 

.53 



Gift 
AfR 2 u,4 



PREFACE 

To compress into a small volume such as 
the present an outline of psychical research 
has proved a more formidable task than I 
anticipated when the Editors asked me to 
undertake this work. The problems are so 
new and entangled and the results so startling 
that it is very difficult to present them in a 
brief yet readable and convincing form. A 
superficial sketch of the subject might have 
been given, but that seemed hardly worthy 
of the aim which the Editors have in view. 
I have therefore endeavoured to give a brief 
survey in separate chapters of the principal 
lines of work and of the results so far achieved 
by the Society for Psychical Research. One of 
the most difficult tasks was to compress into 
a chapter or two an intelligible view of the 
laborious work of the Society during recent 
years in the investigation of automatic 
writing and the evidence this may afford for 
survival of bodily death: a critical inquiry 
that extends over several bulky volumes of the 
Society's Proceedings. Happily my friend, 
Miss Jane Barlow, D.Litt., who has made a 
careful study of this subject and is one of 

Y 



vi PREFACE 

the Committee of Reference and Publication 
of the S.P.R., generously came to my aid. 
Her literary skill is seen in the two last 
chapters,wherein she has helped me to outline 
the salient features of this evidence and the 
general conclusions to which we have been 
led. I have also to thank Miss Barlow for 
much other kind assistance in the preparation 
of this volume. Mrs. H. Sidgwick, D.Litt., 
Hon. Secretary and a former President of the 
S.P.R., has also very kindly read the proof 
sheets and made some valuable suggestions 
which I have adopted. It must, however, 
be understood that neither Mrs. Sidgwick nor 
the Council of the Society for Psychical Re- 
search are in any way responsible for the 
conclusions stated and the opinions expressed 
in the following pages. 

W. F. Barrett. 

Kingstoivn, Co. Dublin^ 
August 1911 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. 

PREFACE 



I SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION i* 

II UNCONSCIOUS MUSCULAR ACTION. THE 

PENDULE EXPLORATEUR AUTOSCOPES . 20 

III THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

HUMAN PERSONALITY . . .32 

IV THE "WILLING GAME " AND SO-CALLED 

THOUGHT-READING . . . .44 

V THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE IN THE NORMAL 

STATE OF THE PERCIPIENT . . 52 

VI THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE IN THE HYP- 
NOTIC STATE . . . . .70 

VII MESMERISM HYPNOTISM SUGGESTION . 82 

VIII EXPERIMENTAL AND SPONTANEOUS TELE- 
PATHY OVER LONG DISTANCES . . 96 

IX VISUAL HALLUCINATIONS I PHANTASMS OF 

THE LIVING AND DEAD . . .111 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

X DREAMS AND CRYSTAL-VISIONS . . 133 



XI SUPERNORMAL PERCEPTION : SEEING WITH- 
OUT EYES 151 

XII THE SO-CALLED DIVINING- OR DOWSING- 
ROD 167 

XIII HAUNTINGS AND POLTERGEISTS . .187 

XIV THE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF SPIRIT- 

UALISM . . . . . .211 

XV AUTOMATIC WRITING CROSS-CORRESPON- 

DENCE . . . . . .219 

XVI AUTOMATIC WRITING (CONTINUED) SUR- 
VIVAL AFTER DEATH . . .236 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 249 

INDEX 253 



PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

CHAPTER I 

SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION 

The phenomena we are about to discuss 
in the present volume are characterized by 
many sceptics as a " recrudescence of super- 
stition " (see Nature, vol. 51, p. 122), and on 
the other hand by many believers as " evidence 
of the supernatural." The average busy man, 
who has no time for critical inquiry, probably 
thinks that there is a good deal of truth in 
both these statements, and therefore prefers 
to give the whole subject a wide berth. But 
the scornful disdain of the savant and the 
credulous belief of the ignorant are now giving 
way to a more rational attitude of mind. A 
widespread desire exists to know something 
about that debatable borderland between 
the territory already conquered by science 
and the dark realms of ignorance and super- 
stition; and to learn what trustworthy 
evidence exists on behalf of a large class of 
obscure psychical phenomena, the importance 
of which it is impossible to exaggerate if the 
9 



10 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

alleged facts be incontestably established. 
To satisfy that desire, in some slight and 
imperfect way, is the object of this little book. 

The subjects to be considered cover a wide 
range, from unconscious muscular action to 
the mysterious operation of our subconscious 
self; from telepathy to apparitions at the 
moment of death; from hypnotism and the 
therapeutic effects of suggestion to crystal- 
gazing and the emergence of hidden human 
faculties; from clairvoyance, or the alleged 
perception of objects without the use of the 
ordinary channels of sense, to dowsing, or the 
finding of underground water and metallic 
lodes with the so-called divining rod; from 
the reputed hauntings of certain places to the 
mischievous pranks of poltergeists (or boisterous 
but harmless ghosts whose asserted freaks may 
have given rise both to fetishism and fairies) ; 
from the inexplicable sounds and movement 
of objects without assignable cause to the 
thaumaturgy of the spiritualistic seance; 
from the scribbling of planchette and automatic 
writing generally to the alleged operation 
of unseen and intelligent agents and the 
possibility of experimental evidence of human 
survival after death. 

These phenomena, even if only a fraction of 
what is asserted by credible witnesses be true, 
open a new and vastly important chapter in 
the book of human knowledge. If established, 
they reveal a wide and wonderful extension 
of human faculty, and give us a glimpse of 
the abysses of human personality, of depths 



SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION 11 

that transcend time and sense and outward 
things, teaching us that " nature is not a 
soulless interaction of atoms, nor life a paltry- 
misery closed in the grave." 

But here we are met, on the one side, with 
the objection of many religious people, that 
these phenomena belong to the region of the 
supernatural, and therefore their investigation 
is a hopeless, if it be not an impious, quest; 
and on the other side with the complacent 
contempt of the superior person, who dismisses 
the whole matter with a shrug as pure super- 
stition. Therefore, before discussing the evi- 
dence on behalf of these obscure phenomena, 
let us ask if there be any valid reason for 
describing them as either supernatural or 
superstitious. 

In the childhood of the race every rare or 
inexplicable event, whether in the heavens or 
on the earth, was regarded as supernatural. 
Eclipses, comets, meteorites, and other unusual 
meteorological phenomena, were a super- 
natural portent or the direct interposition 
of the Deity. But the progress of knowledge 
has shown that these and all other phenomena 
■ — however mysterious and at present in- 
explicable they may be — are part of the order 
of nature, are natural and not supernatural. 
Even a couple of centuries ago, many of the 
marvels of modern scientific discovery would 
have been classed as supernatural. To know 
what was happening less than an hour ago 
at the Antipodes, or to listen to the voice of, 
and interchange conversation with, friends in 



12 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

different countries — the commonplace of the 
telegraph and telephone to-day — not to 
mention the transmission of wireless messages 
across the Atlantic and the instantaneous 
photographic record and reproduction of 
rapidly moving objects, all these would have 
been thought impossible or miraculous. 

The religious mind is ever apt to forget what 
Bishop Butler pointed out in the first chapter 
of his Analogy, that our notion of what is 
natural grows with our greater knowledge, 
so that to beings of more extensive knowledge 
than ourselves " the whole Christian dispen- 
sation may to them appear natural, as natural 
as the visible known course of things appears 
to us." Miracles, as most theologians, from 
St. Augustine onwards, have said, do not 
happen in contradiction to nature, they are not 
supernatural events, but only transcend what 
is at present known to us of nature. We 
cannot pretend to determine the boundary 
between the natural and the supernatural 
until the whole of nature is open to our 
knowledge. If at any point scientific investi- 
gation finds a limit, what is beyond is only 
a part of nature yet unknown. So that, 
however marvellous and inexplicable certain 
phenomena may be, we feel assured that sooner 
or later they will receive their explanation, 
and be embraced within some part of the wide 
domain of science. 

Nor can we restrict these considerations to 
the visible universe. The vast procession of 
phenomena that constitute the order of nature 



SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION 13 

do not come to an abrupt conclusion when they 
can no longer be apprehended by our present 
organs of sense. Science already takes cogniz- 
ance of the imperceptible, imponderable, and 
infinitely rare luminiferous ether, an unseen 
form of matter wholly different from anything 
known to our senses, the very existence of 
which indeed is only known inferentially. 
As an eminent scientific writer has said : 
" In earlier times the suggestion of such a 
medium would probably have been looked 
upon as strong evidence of insanity." The 
law of continuity leads us to believe that 
whatever unknown and perplexing phenomena 
may confront us, in the seen or in the unseen 
universe, in this world or in any other, we 
shall never reach the limit of the natural, and 
never be put to intellectual confusion by the 
discovery of a chaos instead of a cosmos. At 
the centre and throughout every part of this 
ever expanding and limitless sphere of nature, 
there remains — enshrouded from the gaze of 
science — the Ineffable and Supreme Thought 
which alone can be termed Supernatural. 
For the very term phenomenon, which is only 
the Greek word for appearance, means some- 
thing brought within the cognizance of the 
senses and of the reason, thereby it ceases to 
be supernatural and becomes another aspect 
of the creative thought of God. Hence the 
supernatural can never be a matter of observa- 
tion or scientific inquiry; the Divine Being 
alone can transcend His handiwork. 

To talk, therefore, of apparitions and 



14 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

spiritualistic phenomena, etc., as supernatural 
is obviously incorrect. Even if established 
they would not lie beyond nor outside nature, 
but merely beyond our ordinary normal exper- 
ience. They are, in fine, supernormal pheno- 
mena, and that word, first suggested by Mr. 
F. W. H. Myers, will be used throughout this 
book to denote the objects of psychical 
research. 

Then arises the question, is it worth while 
to spend time on subjects which the scientific 
world has until lately regarded as relics of 
superstition, and which are still so regarded 
by many ? It is true that there is now a 
growing and marked change of opinion in 
this respect among many of the foremost men 
of science in every civilized country. But 
official science as a body still looks askance at 
psychical research and speaks of its adherents 
as more or less credulous and superstitious. 
What is meant by superstition ? Etymologic- 
ally it means the standing over an occur- 
rence, in amazement or awe ; shutting out the 
light of inquiry and reason. Where this light 
enters a mystery is no longer enshrouded by 
helplessly standing over it, but we begin to 
understand it. Superstition is, therefore, the 
antithesis of understanding, and of that faith 
in the intelligibility of nature which forms the 
foundation of science and the hope of all 
intellectual progress. 

In a lecture on Science and Superstition 
which the writer heard the Rev. Charles 
Kingsley deliver at the Royal Institution in 



SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION 15 

London in 1866, and which was published in 
Fraser's Magazine for June and July, 1866, 
superstition was defined as " fear of the 
unknown." This is the frequent accompani- 
ment of superstition, but the ancient Greek, 
" who believed that every tree or stream or 
glen had its nymph, whose kindly office men 
might secure by paying them certain honours," 
was a superstitious man, though he did not in 
this case exhibit fear of the unknown. Super- 
stition may be more accurately defined as a 
belief not in accordance with facts, where no 
connection exists between the cause ascribed 
and the effect imagined, and issues in supersti- 
tious practices when such a belief is regarded as 
affording help or injury. Some trivial occur- 
rence may once have been followed by disaster, 
and forthwith it becomes an omen ! Thus a 
chance coincidence is to the superstitious a 
law of nature. Not only amid the culture of 
ancient Greece and Rome, but right down the 
ages to the present time, we find this irrational 
habit of mind. Nor is it confined to the 
credulous and the ignorant. Voltaire went 
home out of humour when he heard a raven 
croak on his left. Many gallant officers and 
clever women dread to sit down thirteen to 
dinner, just as the peasant dreads to hear the 
screech owl. Omens and portents are still 
as rife throughout India as in ancient Rome. 
Superstition is the arrest of reason and inquiry, 
an ignoble and groundless belief. But in 
every case where science comes in at the door 
superstition flies out of the window. And so 



16 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

to-day if we wish to rid ourselves of the many 
silly and mischievous superstitions which 
abound in our midst, we must bring to bear 
upon them the " dry and clear light " of 
science. 

How, then, can the scientific investigation 
of psychical phenomena be regarded as super- 
stitious folly ? Difference of opinion may 
exist as to the interpretation of the phenomena 
or as to the weight of evidence required to 
establish a definite conclusion. But no one 
disputes the need of inquiry, nor that numerous 
painstaking and competent investigators have 
been convinced of the genuineness of many of 
the phenomena we shall describe and the vast 
importance of the issues they foreshadow. 
This being so, the charge of superstition rests 
upon those whose scornful and irrational 
habit of mind leads them to a belief not in 
accordance with facts, and to a practice of 
rejecting the weightiest evidence and accepting 
the flimsiest — just as it suits their preconceived 
notions of the possible and the impossible. 
These are the superstitious. 

There remains a more common form of 
disbelief in psychical phenomena, based upon 
the fact that they have not been witnessed by 
the objector and cannot be reproduced at will 
to convince him. Neither have many of us 
witnessed the fall of meteoric stones to the 
earth, yet we believe in their existence in 
spite of the impossibility of their reproduction 
at our pleasure. The reason why we believe is, 
of course, the testimony of many trustworthy 



SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION 17 

witnesses to whom we have given attention. 
In fact there are some phenomena in physical 
science which are as rare, elusive and inexplic- 
able as those in psychical research. That 
strange phenomenon, to which the name of 
fire-ball or globe lightning has been given, is 
an example. " As we have hitherto been 
unable to reproduce a fire-ball by our most 
powerful electrical machines, some philoso- 
phers have denied that any such thing can 
exist ! But as Arago says : ' Where should 
we be if we set ourselves to deny everything 
we do not know how to explain ? ' The 
amount of trustworthy and independent 
evidence which we possess as to the occurrence 
of this phenomenon is such as must convince 
every reasonable man who chooses to pay due 
attention to the subject No doubt there is a 
great deal of exaggeration, as well as much 
imperfect and erroneous observation, in 
almost all these records. But the existence 
of the main feature (the fire-ball) seems to be 
proved beyond all doubt." These are the 
words of that eminent and genuine scientific 
man, the late Professor Tait, and the words I 
have italicized are equally true of the principal 
phenomena of psychical research. There has 
been, no doubt, much " exaggeration and 
erroneous observation " in connection with 
this subject, but this can also be said of the 
early stages of other new and striking additions 
to our knowledge. 

The fact is, our reason leads us to be 
instinctively hostile to the reception of any 



18 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

evidence which cannot be readily fitted into 
the structure of existing knowledge. We are 
all apt to overlook the difference between 
evidence which involves only a wide extension 
of our knowledge and evidence which involves 
a flat contradiction of well-established laws, 
such as the law of the conservation of energy. 
If telepathy, clairvoyance or even the existence 
of discarnate personalities be experimentally 
established, a vast extension, but surely no 
contradiction, of our present knowledge would 
be involved. Moreover, an entirely new dis- 
covery, such, for example, as the properties of 
radium, could never be accepted if, adopting 
Hume's argument against miracles, we refused 
to credit it on account of our previous ex- 
perience having been uniformly opposed 
to it. 

Perhaps, however, the chief obstacle to the 
general recognition of psychical phenomena 
is to be found in our disinclination to accept 
in this region, the experience and testimony 
of other observers, however eminent and 
competent they may be. The splendid and 
startling discoveries made by Sir W. Crookes 
in physical science were universally received 
with respect and belief, but his equally careful 
investigation of psychical phenomena were 
dismissed by most scientific men as unworthy 
of serious attention. It is true the former 
were more, and the latter less, accessible to 
experimental verification ; but one would have 
thought that at least suspense of judgment, 
awaiting confirmatory evidence, and not 



SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION 19 

scornful contempt, would have been a truer 
scientific attitude. 

Certainly the treatment of hypnotism and 
of its courageous pioneers by the medical 
profession, down to a comparatively recent 
period, is a warning of the grotesque follies 
into which science may fall when it rests 
its opposition to any new departure not 
upon evidence, but upon prejudice and 
negation. Unfortunately, science has been 
too often the friend of systematic negation. 
Facts, as the late Professor W. James has 
remarked, " are denied until a welcome 
interpretation is offered, then they are ad- 
mitted readily enough." No one is omnisci- 
ent, and of late we have had to accept so 
many things once deemed impossible that we 
ought by this time to have learnt the axiom 
of that distinguished philosopher, Sir John 
Herschel, who tells us " the natural philoso- 
pher should believe all things not improbable, 
hope all things not impossible." 



CHAPTER II 

UNCONSCIOUS MUSCULAR ACTION 
THE PENDULE EXPLORATEUR — AUTOSCOPES 

From time to time there comes into vogue, 
not only in England, but in widely distant 
countries, an amusing but mysterious game 
known as the " magic pendulum," or in France 
as the pendule explorateur. It consists of a 
finger ring or little ball suspended from a 
thread which is held between the fingers. 
It is held as steadily as possible, nevertheless 
the ring soon begins to oscillate, swinging to 
and fro like a pendulum, in spite of the effort 
of the holder to control it. If the holder clasps 
with his free hand a person sitting by his side, 
the direction of the oscillation may change 
towards that person. Or, when requested 
so to do, it may set up a rotatory motion, 
either in the direction of, or opposed to, the 
hands of a watch, according as the holder is 
touched by a lady or a gentleman. If the 
ring be suspended within a tumbler it will 
usually strike the hour of the day when so re- 
quested. If the letters of the alphabet widely 
spaced be arranged in a circle and the ring 
suspended over the centre, it will frequently 

20 



UNCONSCIOUS MUSCULAR ACTION 21 

spell out answers to questions addressed to 
it by oscillating towards successive letters. 
The holder of the ring, in order to keep his 
hand steady, may rest his elbow on the table, 
passing the thread from which the ring is 
suspended over the ball of his thumb; a 
pendulum about nine inches long is thus 
formed and not the least motion of the holder's 
hand is discernible. It will be found that 
with certain people of either sex the motions 
of the pendulum are vigorous and respond to 
any question, but with other persons the 
pendulum is sluggish or inert. No apparent 
reason can be assigned for this difference, for 
sensitives are often found among the most 
sceptical. 

What is the explanation of this mysterious 
pendulum ? Simply this, the person who 
holds the suspended ring is unintentionally 
and unconsciously the source of its motion. 
Through the imperceptible and uncontrollable 
tremors of his hand or arm the ring or ball 
begins to vibrate, and the mode of the vibra- 
tion will correspond to his intention. The 
curious thing, however, is that the sensitive 
cannot, by any intentional voluntary act, 
make the ring carry out his wishes, except in 
the clumsiest manner and with obvious move- 
ments of his hand or arm. But he is able to 
do involuntarily and unconsciously what he 
cannot perform voluntarily. That his own 
muscles are really responsible for the mysteri- 
ous motions of the pendule, is seen by suspend- 
ing the thread and ring from a rigid support, 



22 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

such as a gas bracket. However strongly the 
company may now will the ring to move, 
it will remain absolutely motionless, except 
for currents of air, which may be prevented 
by letting the ring depend inside a glass. 

In fact, we have in this present-day pastime 
a convincing illustration of what has been 
termed "motor-automatism," that is to say, 
muscular actions performed without the con- 
currence of conscious thought and will. We 
all know that our life depends on the auto- 
matic action of the heart, lungs and digestive 
system, which go on involuntarily and uncon- 
sciously. In the oscillation of the pendule we 
have the automatic actions of muscles, usually 
under the control of our conscious thought 
and will, unexpectedly responding to the 
unconscious, or barely conscious, wish of the 
holder of the thread. An interesting illustra- 
tion of this was recently given by Professor 
Hyslop in America, who used a sort of plumb- 
bob suspended by a chain. Holding the 
latter between his finger and thumb and 
resting his wrist on a fixed support, he found 
the ball promptly oscillated, or rotated in 
any direction, when he mentally wished it to 
do so, even when he closed his eyes. Yet he 
tells us he was absolutely unconscious of giving 
any motion whatever to the ball and could not 
detect the least muscular movement of his 
hand. Even coherent messages may be spelt 
out by the pendulum without the intention 
and to the great amazement of the sensitive 
whom we may now call the Automatist. How 



UNCONSCIOUS MUSCULAR ACTION 23 

these involuntary and intelligent muscular 
tremors come about we can only surmise. A 
theory which accords with these and other 
mysterious automatic phenomena is that 
our conscious self has a subconscious or 
subliminal self associated with it, a sleeping 
partner as it were, that only speaks through 
these automatic actions. 

With that sleeping partner in our personality 
we are not concerned at present, but only 
with the mode in which it reveals itself. The 
pendule explorateur is not the only way, but 
it is perhaps the oldest way of doing this of 
which we have any historical record. For 
it goes back to the augurs of ancient Rome, 
who sometimes used a sort of magnified 
pendule. The augur stood in the centre of 
a circle, round which were arranged the letters 
of the alphabet, and holding in his hand a 
string from which an iron ring depended, he 
asked the gods for an answer to the question 
addressed him. Whereupon the ring began 
to oscillate first to one letter and then to 
another and the message was spelt out. It 
is said that one of the later Roman emperors 
thus obtained from the augurs the name of 
his probable successor, who was thereupon 
promptly put to death. 

Coming down through the Middle Ages to 
the present time we find an amusing periodic 
revival of the magic pendulum. Each period 
believes it to be a wonderful novelty, just 
discovered, and that its motions are due to an 
occult force of surpassing interest and mystery. 



24 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

The British Museum has a rich collection of 
continental and English books, going back 
some centuries, devoted to the investigation 
and wonders of the pendule eccplorateur. 
Italian, German, French and English writers, 
many of them of considerable learning, tell 
us of its mysterious movements and its 
scientific value. Even in the Philosophical 
Transactions of the Royal Society of London 
for 1736, a paper was published on the remark- 
able orbital motions of a little ball suspended 
by a thread held in the hand. Mr. Grey, 
who made these experiments, was a famous 
man, a pioneer in electrical investigation 
and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He 
fully believed that from these experiments 
would arise a new theory to account for 
the planetary motions ; for he found that the 
little suspended ball always moved in the 
same direction as the planets moved round 
the sun. He acknowledged, however, that 
" he had not found the experiment succeed 
if the thread was supported by anything but 
a human hand." Dr. Mortimer, the then 
Secretary of the Royal Society, repeated 
Grey's experiments with success and hoped 
much from them, but Priestley tells us in his 
Electricity (published in 1775, p. 60) that a 
contemporary savant, Mr. Wheeler, after long- 
continued trials came to the conclusion that 
the unconscious desire to produce the motion 
from west to east was the true explanation, 
though he was not sensible of giving any 
motion to his hand. 



UNCONSCIOUS MUSCULAR ACTION 25 

At the beginning of the nineteenth century 
the German philosopher, Ritter, thought he had 
discovered a new force — Siderism, he called it. 
This, however, turned out to be only uncon- 
scious muscular tremors given to a suspended 
ball or other object lightly held. Some years 
later Mrs. De Morgan in her Reminiscences 
(p. 216) describes how interested Lady 
Byron and other notable people were in the 
wonderful gyrations of the little pendulum, 
believing it to be " the birth of a new science." 
Even within the last year an able journalist 
tells the public of a " new invention " whereby 
the sex of eggs can be discovered by the mode 
of oscillation of the magic pendulum ! Nor 
is the widespread illusion of the wonderful 
gifts of the oscillatory ring confined to the 
civilized world, as among the Karens a ring 
suspended by a thread over a metal basin is 
used to indicate the one dearest to some 
deceased person. 

In some parts of France and America a 
watch, or a ball, depending from a chain or 
fine wire, is carried about by certain persons 
who profess to locate underground ores or 
springs by its oscillation. The usual method, 
however, employed by the " diviner " to 
discover underground ore or water, is by means 
of a forked twig, the two ends of the fork being 
grasped one in each hand. Here we have 
another means of indicating slight involuntary 
muscular movement, for the twig is held in 
neutral or sometimes unstable equilibrium, 
and a very slight muscular tremor will cause 



26 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

its sudden gyration. Sometimes it will 
move either upwards or downwards as the 
holder approaches or recedes from the object 
of his quest. 

In the South of France during the seven- 
teenth century the "forked rod " was employed 
for an endless variety of purposes. A learned 
Jesuit, Father le Brun (Histoire critique des 
pratiques super stitieuses, Paris, 1702), tells 
us it was used to track criminals and the 
fathers of foundlings, to find lost treasure and 
lost boundaries, and it was generally appealed 
to instead of courts of justice; in fact, its use 
became such a scandal that Cardinal Camus 
invoked the authority of the Inquisition, and 
early in the eighteenth century its use in the 
moral world was rightly prohibited. I will 
return to the history and discuss the value of 
the so-called divining- or dowsing-rod in the 
chapter devoted to this subject. The only 
point that interests us now is the sudden and 
mysterious motion of the rod, or the baguette as 
it is called in France. We owe the first clear 
demonstration of the true cause of its motion 
to a well-known French scientist, M. Chevreul, 
who in 1854 published a work entitled La 
Baguette Divinatoire, in which he shows how 
closely related are the movements of the 
baguette to those of the pendule explorateur, 
and that both were due to unconscious 
muscular action (see also a letter from 
Chevreul in the Revue des deux Mondes in 
1833). 

Chevreul, however, was not the first to dis- 



UNCONSCIOUS MUSCULAR ACTION 27 

cover the fact that in some unconscious way 
the holder of the forked twig really moved it. 
Two centuries earlier a learned Jesuit, Father 
A. Kircher, one of the founders of experi- 
mental science, proved that the " divining- 
rod " was inert if balanced on a fixed support 
and moved only when held by a living person 
(see Kircher's folio Magnes sive de Arte 
Magnetica, 1640, p. 724, and his later work, 
Mundus Suhterraneus, vol. ii., p. 200). More- 
over, Chevreul, though he cleared away the 
follies that had clustered round the pendule, 
was himself mistaken in thinking the holder 
of the thread pendulum or the baguette con- 
sciously intended it to move in a certain way. 
This is not the case. As Professor Pierre 
Janet points out, these automatic actions take 
place independently of any conscious volition 
on the part of the operator ("Sans le vouloir 
et sans le savoir," L' ' Automatisme Psycholo- 
gique, by P. Janet, Paris, 1889, p. 873 et seq. See 
also Professor C. Richet's Des Mouvements 
inconscientes, Paris, 1886). 

A study of these unconscious movements 
has recently been made by several experi- 
mental psychologists in France, Germany 
and America. The conclusion was reached 
that if the attention can be given elsewhere, 
it is possible to cultivate in many persons 
automatic movements often of great vigour 
and complexity, which respond to slight 
unconsciously-received suggestions. Further- 
more, as Professor P. Janet says, in certain 
cases more knowledge is exhibited in these 



28 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

automatic manifestations than is possessed 
by our conscious personality, and the study 
of the source of this knowledge forms a large 
part of psychical research. 

We may summarize what we have said as 
follows. Our conscious self always speaks 
through various voluntary muscular move- 
ments, ideas chiefly expressing themselves 
in articulate language. Behind the conscious 
self lies the large unperceived background 
of our personality, which reveals itself through 
involuntary muscular actions to which ordin- 
arily we give no heed. Either they are internal 
and concerned with the movements and 
physiological processes of the organs of the 
body, or they are external and, generally 
speaking, too small to be perceptible. 

Some instrumental means, as we have seen, 
is therefore necessary to render visible these 
minute unconscious external automatic 
actions. It is desirable to give a generic 
name to this class of instrument, and I have 
suggested the term Autoscope or " self -viewer." 
Two autoscopes we have found in (1) the 
little portable pendulum and (2) in the 
forked twig, but there are others. (3) A 
pencil, lightly and passively held so that it 
can write freely on paper, forms an excellent 
autoscope with some persons, and (4) a little 
heart-shaped wooden table mounted with 
three legs, two furnished with small rollers 
and the third with a pencil, is a common form 
of autoscope and goes by the name of plan- 
chette. The sitters place their fingers lightly 



UNCONSCIOUS MUSCULAR ACTION 29 

on planchette, and presently it begins to scrawl 
out letters and sometimes long coherent mes- 
sages, or answers questions. (5) The so-called 
" ouija board " is another autoscope ; here 
the letters of the alphabet are pointed out by 
a little travelling board on which the sitters' 
hands are placed. (6) A small table, round 
which a few persons can sit with their fingers 
resting lightly around the tip of the table, 
is a common form of autoscope. The table 
begins to turn and often to tilt and rap out 
messages according to a prearranged code. 
Faraday, with that quick insight and wonder- 
ful experimental skill he possessed, long ago 
showed that the unconscious muscular action 
of the sitters — when their fingers ever so lightly 
touched the table — was sufficient to account 
for its motion. But here, as elsewhere, the 
muscular hypothesis fails when the table 
moves without any one touching it, as we 
shall see is sometimes the case. In the middle 
of the last century in Guadaloupe, a chair 
formed a similar autoscope and went by the 
name of Juanita ; prose and poetry were spelt 
out by the chair, much to the astonishment 
of those touching it. (7) A simple and effici- 
ent autoscope could easily be made out of a 
poised index or lever, the longer end pointing 
to the letters of the alphabet and the shorter 
end having a cross-piece attached to be 
touched by the sitters. (8) Passive living 
persons can also act as autoscopes when 
they are lightly touched by another person. 
This, as shown in a succeeding chapter, is the 



30 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

explanation of the " willing game " and of the 
success of professional " thought-readers " 
like Bishop and Cumberland a generation 
ago. There are also other autoscopes which 
give rise to sensory hallucinations, such as 
the visions seen by gazing at a translucent 
object like a ball of glass. 

Now as language, which need not be speech 
but any form of expression, is necessary for 
our conscious thought and reason, so auto- 
scopes furnish a means whereby the hidden 
part of our personality, the dumb partner of 
our life, can outwardly express itself ; a means 
whereby an intelligence not under our con- 
scious control can reveal itself by some physical 
or sensory manifestation. 

It is just because these manifestations appear 
to be so novel and detached from ourselves 
that they are apt to be so misleading to some 
and so mischievous to others. Interpreted 
on the one hand as the play of a wonderful 
occult force, science has refused to have 
anything to do with phenomena which seem 
to obey no physical laws, but are capricious 
and self-determined. Interpreted on the 
other, truly enough, as the exhibition of a free 
and intelligent agent, some infernal or dis- 
carnate spirit has been fixed upon as the 
cause, and a fictitious authority is often given 
to their indications. 

Whether these intelligent automatic move- 
ments and hallucinations exhibit information 
outside the memory, either active or latent, 
of the individual who uses the autoscope; 



UNCONSCIOUS MUSCULAR ACTION 31 

or a knowledge beyond that which may have 
been unconsciously derived from the known 
environment, animate and inanimate, — is a 
problem which can only be solved so as to 
gain general acceptance by long and patient 
inquiry. Of this the investigations already 
published in the Proceedings of the Society for 
Psychical Research are an earnest. To the 
scope and work of that Society we must now 
turn. 



CHAPTER III 

THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

HUMAN PERSONALITY 

There can be little doubt that the wide- 
spread and intelligent interest which in recent 
years has been taken in psychical research is 
due to the work of the Society founded for its 
investigation and to the scholarly presentation 
of that work in the two volumes on Human 
Personality which we owe to the brilliant 
genius and indefatigable labour of the late 
Frederic W. H. Myers. It is, moreover, a 
noteworthy fact that the essential portion, the 
first four lengthy chapters, of Mr. Myers' 
magnum opus is now included in the examina- 
tion for the Fellowship in Mental and Moral 
Philosophy in Trinity College, Dublin, the 
highest prize in that famous University. 

The whirligig of time has indeed brought 
its revenges more quickly than usual, when we 
find that a subject which was scorned and 
ridiculed by the learned world, when the 
Society for Psychical Research was founded 
in 1882, has now become an integral part of 
advanced psychological study in at least one 
great University. 

The success which the Society has achieved 

32 



HUMAN PERSONALITY' 83 

is in no small measure due to the wise counsel 
and constant supervision of the late Pro- 
fessor H. Sidgwick. It was singularly fortunate 
that from the outset and for several succeeding 
years, one so learned, cautious and critical 
as Professor Sidgwick was President of the 
Society ; a position also held by Mrs. Sidgwick, 
who has given, and, as Hon. Secretary in 
recent years, continues to give, the benefit of 
her wide knowledge and unremitting care to 
all the details of its work. To these names 
must be added those of the late Edmund 
Gurney and Frederic Myers — for many years 
Hon. Secretaries of the Society — whose 
indefatigable labours and brilliant genius 
were devoted to laying the foundations of the 
Society, upon which the latter, ere his sudden 
death, had begun to build, and we may fain 
hope is still aiding to build, an enduring edifice. 
Those of us who took part in the foundation 
of the Society were convinced that amidst 
much illusion and deception there exists an 
important body of facts, hitherto unrecognized 
by science, which, if incontestably established, 
would be of supreme importance and interest. 
By applying scientific methods to their in- 
vestigation these obscure phenomena are 
being gradually rescued from the disorderly 
mystery of ignorance : but this is a work not 
of one, but of many generations. For this 
reason, it was necessary to form a society, 
the aim of which should be to bring to bear 
on these obscure questions the same spirit 
of exact and unimpassioned inquiry which has 



34 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

enabled science to solve so many problems 
once no less obscure nor less hotly debated. 

The aversion which so many scientific men 
have felt for psychical research arises, perhaps, 
from a disregard of the essential difference 
between physical and psychical science. The 
only gateways of knowledge according to 
the former are the familiar organs of sense, 
whereas the latter indicates that these gateways 
can be occasionally transcended. The main 
object of physical science is to measure and 
forecast, and from its phenomena life and 
free-will must be eliminated. Psychical 
phenomena can neither be measured nor 
forecast, as in their case the influence of life 
and volition can neither be eliminated nor 
foreseen. 

In fact, the study of human personality and 
the extent of human faculty form the main 
objects of psychical research. Its investiga- 
tions have already thrown much light on these 
profound problems. Our Ego is not the simple 
thing " admitting of no degrees " and manifest 
only in our normal consciousness, which the 
older psychologists taught. On the contrary, 
the results of psychical research have led many 
to accept the view, so ably advocated by 
Mr. Myers, that the conscious self, with which 
we are familiar in our waking life, is but a 
portion of a " more comprehensive conscious- 
ness, a profounder faculty, which for the most 
part remains potential, so far as regards the 
life on earth," but which may be liberated in 
full activity by the change we call death. 



HUMAN PERSONALITY 35 

Others, like Mr. Gerald Balfour, in his 
Presidential Address to the S.P.R., suggest a 
more complex view of human personality. To 
the solution of this profound problem we are 
still groping our way, and for the present all 
theories must be regarded as merely pro- 
visional. As a convenient working hypothesis 
I have adopted Mr. Myers' view, but the 
reader will please understand that, even in 
the absence of qualifying words, this view is 
adopted provisionally and not dogmatically. 
All, however, will admit the existence of a 
subconscious life in addition to the primary 
consciousness with which we are familiar. 

Just as experimental physics has shown 
that each sunbeam embraces a potent invisible 
radiation, as well as the visible radiation we 
perceive, so experimental psychology affords 
evidence that each human personality em- 
braces a potent hidden faculty or self, as well as 
the familiar conscious self. Mr. Myers, using 
the psychological conception of a threshold, or 
limen, has termed the former the subliminal 
self. This expresses all the mental activities, 
thoughts, feelings, etc., which lie beneath the 
threshold of consciousness. This threshold 
must be regarded not so much as the entrance 
to a chamber but rather as the normal margin 
of the sea in the boundless ocean of life. 
Above this margin or ocean level rise the 
separate islands of conscious life, but these 
visible portions rest on an invisible and larger 
submerged part. Again, far beneath the ocean 
surface all the separate islands unite in the 



36 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

vast submerged ocean bed. In like manner, 
human personality rears its separate peaks in 
our waking conscious life, but its foundations 
rest on the hidden subliminal life, and 
submerged deeper still lies the Universal 
ocean bed, uniting all life with the Fount of life. 
Sleep and waking are the tides of life, which 
periodically cover and expose the island peaks 
of consciousness. Death may be regarded as 
a subsidence of the island below the ocean 
level ; the withdrawal of human life, from our 
present superficial view, which sees but a frag- 
ment of the whole sum of human personality. 

Now the subliminal self not only contains 
the record of unheeded past impressions, a 
latent memory, but also has activities and 
faculties far transcending the range of our 
conscious self. In this it resembles the 
invisible radiation of the sun, which is the main 
source of all physical and vital energy in this 
world. Evidence of these higher subliminal 
faculties is not wanting; we see them sometimes 
emerging in hypnotic trance, in works of 
genius and inspiration and in the arithmetical 
and musical performances of infant prodigies. 

As an illustration of subliminal activity, 
the following case shows the almost incredible 
swiftness and ease with which " calculating 
boys " can work out long arithmetical prob- 
lems in their head, in far less time than expert 
adults require, even using pencil and paper. 
Mr. E. Blyth of Edinburgh (Proc. S.P.R., vol. 
viii., p. 352) relates this incident of his brother 
Benjamin : — 



HUMAN PERSONALITY 37 

66 When almost six years of age, Ben was 
walking with his father before breakfast, when 
he said — 4 Papa, at what hour was I born ? ' 
He was told 4 a.m., and he then asked, ' What 
o'clock is it at present ? 3 He was told 
7.50 a.m. The child walked on a few hundred 
yards, then turned to his father and stated 
the number of seconds he had lived. My 
father noted down the figures, made the 
calculation when he got home, and told Ben 
he was 172,800 seconds wrong, to which he got 
a ready reply : ' Oh, papa, you have left out 
two days for the leap years — 1820 and 1824,' 
which was the case. This latter fact of the 
extra day in leap year is not known to many 
children of six, and if any one will try to teach 
an ordinary child of those years the multi- 
plication table up to 12 X 12 he will be better 
able to realize how extraordinary was this 
calculation for such an infant." 

In fact, this arithmetical power was not the 
result of the child's education but rather an 
innate faculty, or, as Mr. Myers expresses it, 
a " subliminal uprush." In such cases, the 
possessor of the gift cannot explain how he 
attained it, and usually it disappears after 
childhood. Thus Professor Safford, when a 
child of ten, could correctly work in his head 
in one minute a multiplication sum whose 
answer consisted of thirty-six figures, but lost 
this faculty as he grew up, though in adult life 
he needed it most. 

The conception of a subliminal self 
originated with one of the most eminent 



38 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

scientific men of the last generation, Sir John 
Herschel, who tells us he was led to believe, 
from a curious experience of his own, that 
" there was evidence of a thought, an intelli- 
gence, working within our own organization, 
distinct from that of our own [conscious] 
personality." Certainly the everyday pro- 
cesses of the development, nutrition and 
repair of our body and brain, which go on 
automatically and unconsciously within us, 
are far beyond the powers of our conscious 
personality. All life shares with us this 
miraculous automatism : no chemist, with all 
his appliances, can turn bread-stuff into brain- 
stuff, or hay into milk. 

It must be borne in mind that the term 
subliminal, as used by Mr. Myers, and now 
generally adopted, has a very wide scope. 
It includes well recognized vital and mental 
phenomena such as : — (1) Those sense impres- 
sions which were either unheeded, or too weak 
to arouse conscious perception of them when 
they occurred, but which float into conscious- 
ness during stillness, sleep or hypnotic trance, 
when the stronger sense impressions are 
removed. In like manner, the faint light 
of the stars emerges, with the fading of the 
stronger light of day. (2) The living but 
unconscious power that controls the physio- 
logical and recuperative processes of our own 
body and which are profoundly affected by 
" suggestion." (3) The higher mental faculties 
which emerge in genius, infant prodigies, 
hypnotic trance, etc. (4) The disintegration 



HUMAN PERSONALITY 39 

of personality which is seen in dual conscious- 
ness, secondary and even multiplex-selves 
displacing the normal self. All these lie 
within the scope of orthodox psychology. 
The term subliminal is also used to denote 
(5) those submerged and higher faculties of 
percipience, such as " seeing without eyes," 
which are alleged to exist in some persons, 
and also (6) those phenomena which claim an 
origin outside the mind of the percipient ; 
which origin may be sought (a) in the minds 
of other living men, as in telepathy, or (b) in — 
as some believe — disembodied minds, discar- 
nate intelligences, whether human or otherwise. 
These latter phenomena (b), if established, I 
should prefer to call supraliminal, " above the 
threshold " — but this term Mr. Myers has 
restricted to, and it is now used to denote, all 
that relates to our ordinary waking conscious- 
ness; this might have been perhaps more 
appropriately called cisliminal — " within the 
threshold " of consciousness. 

Here and there we find certain individuals, 
through whom the subliminal self, as regards 
(5) and (6), manifests itself more freely than 
through others; these have been termed 
" mediums," a word, it is true, that suggests 
Browning's Sludge. But, just as scientific 
investigation has shown that mesmerists and 
dowsers are not all charlatans, so it has shown 
that even paid mediums are not always rogues, 
though the term " psychic " or " automatist " 
would certainly be preferable. The scepti- 
cism which ridicules the necessity of a 



40 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

" medium " is forgetful of the fact that all 
physical phenomena which cannot be directly 
perceived by our senses, require the inter- 
vention of a physical medium to make them 
perceptible. 

Thus the invisible radiation of the sun can 
only be investigated through some medium 
such as a photographic plate, or a delicate 
thermoscope, both of which render those 
invisible rays perceptible to our vision. In 
like manner the subliminal self, as mentioned 
in the preceding chapter, requires some agency, 
mechanical or sensory — some autoscope — • 
to render its operation sensible. There is 
therefore nothing incomprehensible or un- 
scientific in the necessity for an automatist or 
medium in those phenomena which transcend 
our conscious apprehension. 

This extension of human faculty, revealing, 
as it does, more profoundly the mysterious 
depths of our being, enables us to explain 
many phenomena that have been attributed 
to discarnate human beings. Does it explain 
all the phenomena included in the domain of 
psychical research ? I venture to think it 
does not, but at present we have to grope our 
way and clear the ground for the future 
explorer of these unknown regions. 

Here let us pause in order to note that 
among the many eminent men who have given 
their adhesion to the Society for Psychical 
Research, we find a former Prime Minister, the 
Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, was President of 
the Psychical Research Society in 1893, and a 



HUMAN PERSONALITY 41 

Vice-President from the outset, while another 
Prime Minister, Mr. Gladstone, was a member 
of the Society and deeply interested in its 
work. Nor have the foremost representatives 
of British, Continental and American Science 
held aloof. That eminent savant, Sir W. 
Crookes, O.M., now Foreign Secretary of the 
Royal Society of London, has been President 
of the S.P.R. — as we shall call it for brevity — 
and the President of the Royal Society itself 
is, as was his predecessor, a member of the 
S.P.R., together with such illustrious scientific 
men as Dr. A. R. Wallace, O.M., Sir J. J. 
Thomson, Lord Rayleigh, O.M., Sir O. Lodge, 
and many others. We may name among 
other distinguished Continental adherents of 
the S.P.R. its former President, Professor C. 
Richet, the distinguished physiologist ; Mme. 
Curie, the discoverer of radium; Professors 
Bergson, Bernheim, Janet, Ribot and the 
late Professor Hertz; and in America the late 
Professor W. James, also a former President 
of the S.P.R., with Professors E. Pickering 
and Bowditch. Among great names in 
English literature and art, who were honorary 
members of the Society, are to be found Lord 
Tennyson, Mr. Ruskin and Mr G. F. Watts. 
The numerical growth and active work of the 
S.P.R. is no less remarkable; it now numbers 
upwards of 1,200 members and associates, and 
has had at various times considerable sums 
placed at its disposal, towards an endowment 
for research work. 

Certainly the first decade of the twentieth 



42 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

century will form a memorable epoch in the 
history of Psychical Research, were it for 
no other reason than that it has seen the 
removal of the most eminent investigators 
of psychical phenomena. Edmund Gurney 
had gone before, and now Henry Sidgwick, 
Frederic Myers, Richard Hodgson, William 
James, and Frank Podmore — though his 
outlook was narrower — have successively 
passed away, leaving empty places that can 
scarcely be filled and impoverishing us by the 
withdrawal of so much wisdom, knowledge 
and zeal, though happily bequeathing to us 
their fruit in accomplished work of the utmost 
value. 

But it is not by losses only, or even we may 
trust chiefly, that these years will be com- 
memorated. They have marked a period of 
exceptionally rapid progress along the lines 
laid down for the study of the various subjects 
comprehended under the term of Psychical 
Research; more especially in one of its main 
problems. Evidence bearing on the question 
of the existence of imseen intelligences, ap- 
parently in some cases directing the hand 
in automatic writing, has accumulated with 
unusual abundance; its increase in quantity 
being, moreover, accompanied by an im- 
provement in quality, which is a very notable 
feature. Now, as on any hypothesis of 
survival, such a result is just what we might 
expect to follow the passing into another life 
of persons deeply interested as well as widely 
experienced in the difficult problems that 



HUMAN PERSONALITY 43 

confront us, the fact that the result has 
followed seems in some degree to strengthen 
the hypothesis of their continued activity 
and co-operation. 

The consideration of this evidence must be 
postponed to the sequel ; the extent of human 
faculty, seen in other phenomena of psychical 
research, must first engage our attention; 
to this we must now turn. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE "WILLING GAME" AND SO-CALLED 
THOUGHT-HEADING 

Some years ago a parlour pastime called 
the " Willing Game " was a favourite amuse- 
ment and gave rise to much public discussion. 
Certain persons were very expert at what 
appeared to be " thought-reading," a few 
became professional performers. The public 
were greatly mystified, some considering it 
a trick, others that the remarkable success 
attained in private circles proved that 
trickery was out of the question, and afforded 
evidence of genuine " thought-transference." 
But the usual method of playing the game 
showed that a simpler explanation could be 
given. The blindfolded performer, whom we 
may call the percipient, had to do something 
that had been concealed from him, such as to 
find a hidden object, pick out a certain person, 
or write a figure on a blackboard, etc. Some 
one of the company who knew the secret, and 
whom we will call the agent, laid his hands 
lightly on the shoulders or forehead of the 
percipient, sometimes he grasped the hand of 
the latter and placed it on his forehead, and 
then thought intently of the thing to be done, 



SO-CALLED THOUGHT-READING 45 

but made no conscious effort of guidance. If 
the percipient were a good subject, and allowed 
his mind to remain passive, he rarely failed 
to accomplish what was desired; nor could 
he give the least explanation of how he did 
it. Both agent and percipient were equally 
astonished, and it is no wonder that those who 
took part in the performance at home were 
convinced that some kind of mental wireless 
telegraphy occurred, independently of the 
senses. 

Here, for example, are some experiments 
made when I was staying with my friend, the 
late Mr. Lawson Tait, the famous surgeon, 
in the Easter of 1877 : The subject, a medical 
man, having left the room and placed himself 
beyond eye and ear shot, we agreed that on his 
return he should move the fire-screen and double 
it back. Recalling the subject, my host, the 
surgeon, put his hands round the subject's 
waist and silently willed what should be done. 
After a few moments of indecision he did 
exactly what was mentally wished. Among 
other experiments we desired the subject 
should turn off the gas tap of one out of several 
gas brackets. This was accurately done, no 
word being spoken, only the subject was 
lightly grasped as before. Here it is difficult 
to understand how the " muscular sense " 
would lead to the raising of the hands and 
correct performance of the wish. Information 
can, however, be conveyed through involun- 
tary gestures or glances from those who know 
what has to be done, if the subject is not 



46 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

blindfolded, and blindfolding is often ineffec- 
tive, because carelessly done. 

Thirty years ago, two professional " thought- 
readers," a Mr. Bishop and a Mr. Cumberland, 
gained a wide celebrity through their per- 
formances in public and before famous 
personages. A small committee of eminent 
men, among whom were Mr. (afterwards Sir 
Francis) Galton, Mr. G. J. Romanes and others, 
made some careful tests of Mr. Bishop's 
powers. A report of this committee written 
by Mr. Romanes was published in the scientific 
journal Nature for June 23, 1881. The 
following extract from that report is of 
interest. The experiments took place in 
a large drawing-room, in the house of Professor 
Croom Robertson. 

" First, Mr. Bishop was taken out of the 
room by me (G. J. Romanes) to the hall down- 
stairs, where I blindfolded him with a handker- 
chief ; and, in order to do so securely, I thrust 
pieces of cotton- wool beneath the handkerchief 
below the eyes. In all the subsequent ex- 
periments Mr. Bishop was blindfolded, and in 
the same manner. While I was doing this, 
Mr. Alfred Sidgwick was hiding a small object 
beneath one of the several rugs in the drawing- 
room; it having been previously arranged 
that he was to choose any object he liked for 
this purpose, and to conceal it in any part of 
the drawing-room which his fancy might 
select. When he had done this the drawing- 
room door was opened and the word 4 Ready ' 
called. I then led Mr. Bishop up-stairs, and 



SO-CALLED THOUGHT-READING 47 

handed him over to Mr. Sidgwick, who at that 
moment was standing in the middle line 
between the two drawing-rooms, with his 
back to the rug in question, and at a distance 
from it of about fifteen feet. Mr. Bishop then 
took the left hand of Mr. Sidgwick, placed it 
on his (Mr. Bishop's) forehead, and requested 
him to think continuously of the place where 
the object was concealed. After standing 
motionless for about ten seconds Mr. Bishop 
suddenly faced round, walked briskly with 
Mr. Sidgwick in a direct line to the rug, raised 
it, and picked up the object. In doing all 
this there was not the slightest hesitation, so 
that to all appearance it seemed as if Mr. 
Bishop knew as well as Mr. Sidgwick the pre- 
ci se spot where the ob j ect was lying. ' ' Neither 
did it make any difference whether the article 
was placed at a high or a low elevation. 

Mr. Romanes then describes experiments 
in which Mr. Bishop was successful in locating 
any small spot thought of on the body of any 
member of the committee, or on any table or 
chair, etc. In conclusion, it is stated, that 
as in all these trials Mr. Bishop was effectually 
blindfolded and had no means of direct 
information, " his success was unquestionably 
very striking." 

Nevertheless, that success Mr. Romanes 
suggests was due to : " Mr. Bishop interpreting, 
whether consciously or unconsciously, the 
indications involuntarily and unwittingly sup- 
plied to him by the muscles of his subjects." 
Failure results when the subject [i.e. the agent] 



4S PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

" is blindfolded and loses his bearings, or when 
the connection between Mr. Bishop and the 
subject is not of a rigid nature." 

The committee then tested Mr. Bishop to 
ascertain if he had an exceptional degree of 
tactile sensibility, or power of distinguishing 
between small variations of resistance and 
pressure. But the result showed this was 
not the case, he had in fact rather less tactile 
sensibility than some members of the com- 
mittee; his success was not therefore due to 
this cause, but ascribed " to his having paid 
greater attention to the subject " — whatever 
that may mean. Nor is the successful per- 
former, whoever he may be, always conscious of 
being guided by any muscular sense. In fact, 
Dr. W. B. Carpenter (the physiologist) in the 
following number of Nature relates how he 
himself was equally successful in discovering 
a particular card that had been chosen, yet 
though he watched carefully for any material 
guidance, he could not tell how he was led 
to make the right selection. 

It is certainly a very remarkable thing, as 
Mr. Romanes points out, that Mr. Bishop and 
other successful " thought-readers " should 
unconsciously and almost instantaneously 
interpret imperceptible muscular movements 
unconsciously made by the agent. Albeit 
that the muscular sense is concerned in most 
cases is evident from the following experiments 
which any one can make, and which, as a 
matter of fact, I tried many years ago with 
a clever amateur " thought -reader," then a 



SO-CALLED THOUGHT-READING 49 

young man, now an Irish M.P. and K.C. 
Put a piece of cotton-wool between the fingers 
of the agent and the shoulder or head of the 
percipient, and as a rule no success is obtainable 
unless the cotton-wool be pressed so hard that 
the compressed wool conveys the variations 
of pressure. Ask the quasi thought-reader 
to name aloud the figure thought of, or the 
place where the object is hidden, and he 
cannot do so; in fact, he consciously knows 
nothing of what he has to do, but is uncon- 
sciously guided, probably by slight differences 
in the contact of the agent's hand. Blindfold 
the agent and not the percipient, and if the 
former loses his bearings, as Mr. Romanes 
says, the experiment fails. Let a slack piece 
of string connect the agent and percipient and 
the experiment fails, though it may succeed 
with a wire connection, as this can transmit 
variations of tension. The passive percipient 
is in fact the autoscope of the agent. 

A word or two must be said in conclusion 
about the public performance of so-called 
" thought-readers." The exhibitions given 
by Bishop and by Cumberland some years 
ago are, as already explained, interesting 
displays of unconscious muscular guidance, 
verging, it may be, occasionally into incipient 
and genuine thought-transference. Other 
public exhibitions, like those of the Zancigs, 
cannot be so explained, as the performers 
are far apart. Here only two explanations 
are possible — telepathy or trickery. Now 
the characteristic of all genuine telepathic 



50 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

phenomena, as now known, is their elusiveness. 
Sometimes, why we do not know, great success 
is attainable in telepathic experiments; at 
other times, with the same persons, and under, 
apparently, the same conditions, dismal failure 
results. Obviously a public performer cannot 
depend upon so fitful and uncertain a faculty. 
The audience come to see an exhibition and 
they must not be disappointed. It is therefore 
highly improbable that any regular public 
performance of so-called thought-reading 
is a genuine exhibition of telepathy. But a 
cleverly arranged code of signals has not this 
uncertainty, and when the performer and his 
subject are proficient in such a code they may 
bamboozle the most inquisitive among the 
audience. The code may consist in variations 
of the question, " Can you see this ?" " Now can 
you see ? " " What is this ? " etc., or in various 
slight sounds or movements made by the 
performer, and so on. One of these public 
performers, whose subject was a young girl, 
apparently hypnotized, startled the public 
some years ago. He gave me a private 
exhibition, for which I had secured the help 
of a shorthand writer, who was not seen by 
the performers. After an interesting display, 
an examination of the shorthand notes showed 
the existence of some kind of verbal code 
though it could not be fully unravelled. 

The performance of the Zancigs and of one 
or two others is far more remarkable and 
puzzling ; whatever method they employ is 
not generally known. I had the opportunity 



SO-CALLED THOUGHT-READING 51 

of testing the Zancigs at a private performance 
in Dublin, and they courteously submitted 
themselves to a committeeof S.P.R. members in 
London, giving an exhibition in rooms selected 
by the committee. Though I was unable to 
be present on that occasion, my place was 
better filled by a member of the Council who 
is an expert conjurer. The committee arrived 
at no conclusion, some of the experiments 
looked like genuine telepathy, and possibly 
this exists to some extent between the two per- 
formers. But the fact that M. Zancig requires 
to be the transmitting agent, and the almost 
unfailing success of the trials, differentiates 
them from the experiments on genuine thought- 
transference which will be described in the next 
chapter. Moreover, no scientific results of 
any value can be expected from those who 
are engaged in paid public exhibitions. 
Nevertheless, every one gives so much more 
credence to what he has seen than to what he 
has read, that a critical and scientific friend, 
who had scoffed at the evidence for telepathy 
laboriously obtained by the S.P.R., informed 
me some time ago that he had been converted 
to a belief in its reality. On inquiring how 
this came about, he told me he had witnessed 
and tested a public performance of thought- 
reading, which turned out to be much inferior 
to that given by the Zancigs ! 



CHAPTER V 

THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE IN THE NORMAL 
STATE OF THE PERCIPIENT 

Those who have made numerous experi- 
ments with good subjects in the so-called 
" willing game " have, as already stated, 
found it extremely difficult to account for 
some of the successful results by the hypo- 
thesis of involuntary muscular guidance — an 
hypothesis often stretched to illegitimate 
lengths. Thirty years ago, in a communica- 
tion published in the scientific journal Nature 
for July 7, 1881, I wrote— 

" After making the most extravagant allow- 
ance for the existence in some persons of a 
muscular sense of preternatural acuteness, 
there still remained a large residuum of facts 
wholly unaccounted for on any received 
hypothesis. These facts pointed in the 
direction of the existence either of a hitherto 
unrecognized sensory organ, or of the direct 
action of mind on mind without the inter- 
vention of any sense impressions. Such 
startling conclusions could not be accepted 
without prolonged and severe examination, 
and it was in the hope of stimulating inquiry, 
among those who had more leisure and fitness 
52 



THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE 53 

for the pursuit than myself, that led me to 
publish a few years ago a brief record of my 
experiments, which, however, only brought 
derision and denunciation upon me. As no 
physiologist came forward to give the subject 
the wide and patient inquiry it demanded, 
I went on with the investigation, and for five 
years have never let an opportunity slip which 
would add to the information I possessed. 
A letter addressed to the Times, in September 
1876, asking for communications from those 
who had witnessed good illustrations of the 
4 willing game,' brought me in a flood of 
replies from all parts of England. Each case 
that seemed worthy of inquiry was, if possible, 
visited and investigated by myself during the 
vacation." 

One of these cases which seemed quite 
inexplicable on any theory of muscle-reading, 
and which was personally investigated during 
Easter 1881, was that of the children of the 
late Rev. A. M. Creery, a respected clergyman 
in Buxton. This case is historically of 
importance, for it led to the first clear evidence 
of thought-transference in the normal state 
of the percipient. Stringent precautions were 
taken to avoid any information being conveyed 
to the subject through the ordinary channels 
of sense. For example, one of the percipients,' 
Maud, then a child of twelve years old, was 
taken to an empty adjoining room and both 
doors closed. I then wrote down some object 
likely to be in the house, which we (the family 
together with myself) silently thought of. 



54 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

No one was allowed to leave their place or 
to speak a word. The percipient had pre- 
viously been told to fetch the object as 
soon as she "guessed" what it was, and then 
return with it to the drawing-room where we 
were seated. Quoting again from my commu- 
nication to Nature — 

" Having fastened the doors I wrote down 
the following articles, one by one, with the 
results stated — hair-brush, correctly brought; 
wine-glass, correctly brought ; orange, correctly 
brought; toasting- fork, wrong on the first 
attempt, right on the second ; apple, correctly 
brought ; knife, correctly brought ; smoothing- 
iron, correctly brought; tumbler, correctly 
brought; cup, correctly brought; saucer, 
failure. Then names of towns were fixed on, 
the name to be called out by the child outside 
the closed door of the drawing-room, but 
guessed when fastened into the adjoining 
room. In this way, Liverpool, Stockport, 
Lancaster, York, Manchester, Macclesfield 
were all correctly given; Leicester was said 
to be Chester; Windsor, Birmingham and 
Canterbury were failures." 

The success obtained in these and other 
experiments could not be explained by mere 
lucky guesses nor by any involuntary guidance 
from those who knew, for there was no contact, 
and in some trials (as in the foregoing) the per- 
cipient was out of sight and hearing. Under 
such circumstances any secret code of signals 
between children would have been practically 
impossible to carry out 5 moreover, in several 



THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE 55 

successful experiments no one but myself 
knew what was to be done. 

A new and promising field of scientific 
inquiry was thus opened up, and it was 
necessary that other investigators should 
either verify or disprove the evidence so far 
obtained on behalf of a faculty hitherto 
unrecognized by science. But such an investi- 
gation lay outside the scope of any existing 
scientific society ; it therefore seemed essential 
to form a new Society to carry on the inquiry 
and publish the results obtained. Accord- 
ingly/ after consultation with Mr. Myers, Mr. 
Romanes and others, a conference was called 
by the present writer, at which an account 
was given of the evidence so far obtained on 
behalf of thought-transference and other 
psychical phenomena. This resulted in the 
foundation of the Society for Psychical 
Research in January 1882, an investigation 
of the evidence on behalf of thought-trans- 
ference being the first work undertaken by 
the Society. The special committee appointed 
for this purpose consisted of Mr. F. W. H. 
Myers, Mr. E. Gurney and the present writer. 

A preliminary account of the results ob- 
tained at Buxton with the Misses Creery 
was published as a joint article by Gurney, 
Myers and myself, in the Nineteenth Century 
for June 1882; this therefore marks a not 
unimportant date in the history of psychi- 
cal research ; the full details of our research 
appeared in the first volume of the Proceedings 
of the S.P.R. Precautions were of course 



5Q PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

taken to avoid any indication reaching the 
percipient through the ordinary channels of 
sense. The exceptional nature of the inquiry 
made it necessary for the committee to put 
on one side any argument based on moral 
character and demeanour, therefore they 
formed their conclusions only on those experi- 
ments where the investigating committee 
alone knew the selected word or thing. This 
is expressly emphasized and reiterated in their 
Reports, and yet disregarded by critics. Even 
as regards the committee the same scrupulous 
care was taken, sometimes one member and 
sometimes another being excluded from the 
trials. 

Here, for instance, are some experiments, 
quoted in the first Report (Proc. S.P.R., vol. 
i., p. 22), where I was not present, nor did any 
of the family know the object selected, so that 
neither I nor they can be accused of being 
" in the trick." The experiments were re- 
corded by Mr. Myers and copied from the 
MS. notes which he made at the time, still 
in my possession : — 

" The second series of experiments, which 
we venture to think are unexceptionable, were 
made by Mr. Myers and Mr. Gurney, together 
with two ladies who were entire strangers to 
the family. None of the family knew what 
we had selected, the type of thing [a card or 
a number, etc.] only being told to the child 
chosen to guess. The experimenters took 
every precaution in order that no indication, 
however slight, should reach the child. She 



THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE 57 

was recalled by one of the experimenters and 
stood near the door with downcast eyes. In 
this way the following results were obtained. 
The thing selected is printed in italics, and the 
only words spoken during the experiment are 
put in parentheses — 

" Experiments made on April 13, 1882 — 
[Omitting some successful experiments with 
numbers and names, the following were 
noted as specially evidential by Gurney and 
Myers.] 

" Cards to be named. [A full pack was used, 
from which one was drawn at random.] 

Two of clubs. — Right first time. 

Queen of diamonds. — Right first time. 

Four of spades. — Failed. 

Four of hearts. — Right first time. 

King of hearts. — Right first time. 

Two of diamonds. — Right first time 

Ace of hearts. — Right first time. 

Nine of spades. — Right first time. 

Five of diamonds. — Four of diamonds (No). 

Four of hearts (No). Five of diamonds 

(Right). 
Two of spades. — Right first time. 
Eight of diamonds. — Ace of diamonds 

said ; no second trial given. 
Three of hearts. — Right first time. 
Five of clubs. — Failed. 
Ace of spades. — Failed. 

" Special precautions were taken to avoid 
errors of experiment . . . and the results show 



58 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

that, in the case of cards, out of fourteen succes- 
sive trials nine were guessed rightly the first 
time, and only three trials can be said to have 
been complete failures. On none of these occa- 
sions was it even remotely possible for the child 
to obtain by any ordinary means a knowledge 
of the card selected. Our own facial expres- 
sion was the only index open to her ; and even 
if we had not purposely looked as neutral as 
possible, it is difficult to imagine how we could 
have unconsciously carried, say, the two of 
diamonds written on our foreheads." 

There remains only the hypothesis of a 
lucky series of guesses. But the probability 
of this can be estimated, and that is the main 
reason why cards or some definite series of 
numbers were selected. In the case of playing 
cards, the odds against guessing any particular 
card rightly were of course 51 to 1 ; but when, 
as in this case, five cards in succession are 
named rightly on the first response, the odds 
against this happening by pure chance are 
considerably over a million to one. These, 
and many other experiments made later on, 
were submitted to one of the highest authorities 
on the Calculus of Probabilities, Professor 
Edgeworth. Only those experiments were 
selected in which knowledge of the object 
thought of was confined exclusively to the 
investigating committee. Altogether under 
these conditions there were some 450 trials 
with cards and numbers : of these 260 trials 
were ma,de with playing cards, the first 
response giving on an average one quite 



THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE 59 

right in nine times, instead of one in fifty- 
two, as would result from pure guesswork. 
Similar results were obtained with numbers 
of two figures. Mr. Edgeworth, as the result 
of his calculations, stated that chance coin- 
cidence is certainly ruled out, and " the 
recorded observations must have resulted 
either from collusion on the part of those 
concerned or from thought-transference." 

It is necessary to examine this alternative 
of collusion a little more closely, as doubt 
has been thrown on this wonderful series of 
experiments because signalling was discovered 
between the children some time afterwards, 
when they had practically lost their psychic 
gift. But however clever a signaller may be, his 
ingenuity only comes into play when he knows 
what to signal. In the experiments just 
referred to the committee alone knew, and 
therefore if collusion occurred, one or other 
of the committee must have been partici- 
pators. Now the credit of any one witness 
is not likely to suffice for the demand here 
made upon it, but every additional witness 
who, as De Morgan said, "has a fair stock 
of credit to draw upon," is an important gain. 
Hence, to the great advantage of this investi- 
gation, Professor and Mrs. Henry Sidgwick 
early in the inquiry went to Buxton and made 
a series of experiments, in some of which I 
took part, with the result that they were 
convinced a prima facie case existed on behalf 
of the genuineness of the phenomena; and 
later on, more conclusive experiments with 



60 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

other subjects, converted them to a belief in 
thought-transference. 

To the witnesses already named may also 
be added, at this early period, the late Professor 
Balfour Stewart, F.R.S., who kindly acceded 
to my request to make independent trials 
with the same percipients. Professor (now 
Sir Alfred) Hopkinson, Vice-Chancellor of 
the University of Manchester, accompanied 
Professor B. Stewart, and though their tests 
were fewer and less stringent, they corrobor- 
ated the conclusions of the committee. 
Furthermore, in 1882 some of the children 
came over to my house at Kingstown and 
also went to Mr. Myers' house in Cambridge, 
and at both places numerous successful 
experiments were made under the strictest 
conditions. Take, for instance, the experi- 
ments at Cambridge in August 1882 (see 
Proc. S.P.R., vol. i.), where the percipient, 
Miss M. Creery, was placed " outside a closed 
and locked door, a yard or two from it, in 
charge of one of the committee, who observed 
her attentively." Within the room one of 
the committee silently drew a card from a 
pack and held it in view of the sitters : in 
this way out of ten trials two cards were named 
rightly on the first answer, besides several 
close approximations. On another day Mrs. 
Myers and I alone knew the card selected, and 
out of eight trials, three were guessed rightly — 
one, it is true, on a second attempt. A com- 
parative experiment was also made by allow- 
ing two of the sisters of the percipient to know 



THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE 61 

the card chosen, and the same degree of 
success was obtained. The original note-books 
of these long and wearisome experiments, only 
a portion of which were published, are still in 
my possession, and conclusively establish the 
fact that collusion except on the part of 
one or other of the committee was entirely 
out of the question. 

But freshness of interest on the part of the 
percipient appears essential to success; we 
all noted that the best results were obtained 
on those days when there was no weariness 
or anxiety for success. At the close of the 
third Report, the committee state that the 
power of the percipients gradually diminished 
during the months over which the experiments 
extended, so that at the end they failed under 
the easiest and most lax conditions, where at 
the beginning they succeeded under the most 
stringent tests. This gradual decline of 
power, they remark, " resembled the disap- 
pearance of a transitory pathological condi- 
tion, being the very opposite of what might 
be expected from a growing proficiency in 
code communication. 5 ' It is therefore less 
surprising to find that when the Misses Creery, 
anxious to appear successful, were tested 
again some time later at Cambridge, it 
was discovered that they were using a 
code of signals. Here one of the sisters was 
allowed to know the thing selected, and she 
tried to help her sister to " guess " it by this 
improper means. 

Whether this had occurred in the earlier 



62 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

trials or not, it obviously discredits all experi- 
ments where such a thing is at all possible. 
Hence the necessity, emphasized in the pre- 
ceding pages, of confining our attention in 
all cases to, and drawing our conclusions 
from, those trials where the investigators 
themselves could alone be charged with the 
possibility of collusion. 

Professor Sidgwick, in a Presidential ad- 
dress to the S.P.R., before these later trials 
(Proc, vol. ii., p. 154), has given the best 
answer to those who would reject the evidence 
afforded by the early experiments. He 
remarks — 

" None of our critics appear to me to 
appreciate the kind and degree of evidence 
that we have already obtained. They often 
imply that the experiments on thought- 
transference are such as could be performed 
by ' cheating mediums or mesmerists,' by 
the simple means of a code of signals, which 
the investigating committee cannot find out; 
quite ignoring such cases as that given in 
Proc. S. P. J?., Part I., where the cards guessed by 
one of the Miss Creerys were unknown to any 
one but the four strangers who went to witness 
the experiments; and where, therefore, as I 
have before said, the investigators must either 
have been idiots, or one or other of them in 
the trick. Similar remarks may be made 
about the experiments reported in the last 
Proceedings, where four or five different 
persons must either have been guilty of 
un veracity or collusion, or of most abnormal 



THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE 63 

stupidity if the phenomena were not 
genuine." 

It is right to say that, although I differed 
from them, Professor Sidgwick, together 
with Mr. Myers and Mr. Gurney, subsequently 
decided against further publishing any of 
these experiments. They no doubt con- 
sidered that at such an elementary stage of 
the investigation, with as yet so small a 
quantity of evidence to lay before so many 
hostile critics, it was absolutely necessary to 
shun even the appearance of the slightest 
contact with detected fraud. Under the 
changed conditions of the present day, how- 
ever, there is no longer any reason for setting 
aside the, as I believe, unimpeachable experi- 
ments in the earlier series. 

In fact, numerous investigators, both at 
home and abroad, have since obtained addi- 
tional and irrefragable evidence on behalf of 
thought-transference. The first of these 
contributions was made in 1883 in a paper 
read before the Literary and Philosophical 
Society of Liverpool — the authors being Mr. 
Malcolm Guthrie and Mr. Birchall, the Hon. 
Secretary of that Society. A fuller report of 
these and subsequent experiments by the 
same investigators was contributed to the 
Proceedings of the S.P.R., 1883-85. The 
subjects, or percipients, in these experiments 
were two young ladies, well known to Mr. 
Guthrie, and every care was taken to prevent 
any information being conveyed through the 
organs of sense. Mr. Gurney and Mr. Myers 



64 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

and myself were present at some of the trials, 
which were specially interesting as showing 
that the mental transfer of tastes and pains 
took place in the normal as well as in the 
hypnotic state. Thus a collection was made 
of some twenty strongly tasting substances; 
these were put into small bottles or parcels 
and kept out of sight of the subject; every 
care was taken to prevent any odour of the 
substance reaching the percipient, moreover 
no strongly odorous substance was used in 
these trials. The percipient being seated 
with her back to the agent and blindfolded, 
the taster, usually outside the room, then 
silently took a small quantity of one of the 
substances, put it in his mouth, and returning 
placed his hand on the shoulder of the per- 
cipient, who called out what she apparently 
tasted; no one else was allowed to speak. 
Thus the agent having tasted vinegar, the 
percipient said she felt " a sharp and nasty 
taste." The agent then tasted mustard, and 
the percipient at once said, " I now taste 
mustard." But this seemed to spoil the next 
couple of trials, as the percipient said, " I still 
feel the hot taste of mustard." Another 
evening, Worcester sauce, bitter aloes, alum, 
nutmeg, cloves and cayenne pepper were cor- 
rectly named by the percipient. There were, 
it is true, several failures, but the successes 
were quite beyond pure guesswork, though 
more complete protection (which was made 
subsequently) against the possibility of the 
percipient obtaining indications through the 



THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE 65 

sense of smell would have been desirable; 
nevertheless alum, bitter aloes and an acid 
lozenge, all correctly named, give off no 
sensible odour. 

This possible objection of odour does not 
apply to the transference of pains. Here 
Dr. Herdman, F.R.S., the distinguished Pro- 
fessor of Natural History in the University 
of Liverpool, was present with other investi- 
gators, and corroborated the results obtained 
in his presence. The percipient, Miss Ralph, 
one of the two ladies referred to, was seated 
as before, blindfolded with her back to the 
investigators, who all agreed noiselessly to 
inflict upon themselves some similar trivial 
pain. There was no contact with the percipi- 
ent. In all twenty trials were made ; in ten of 
these the percipient localized the pain with 
great precision ; in six the localization was 
nearly exact, and in four nothing was felt or 
the localization was wrong. These experiments 
show that in certain subjects in a passive 
waking state, a " community of sensation " 
occurs between the agent and percipient, such 
as was long before observed when the subject 
was in the mesmeric trance. 

We are also indebted to Mr. Guthrie for a 
lengthy and carefully conducted series of 
experiments on the mental transference of 
colours, rough diagrams of pictures and 
imaginary scenes. Sir Oliver Lodge, F.R.S., 
was present at many of these trials. The 
drawing or object to be thought of was placed 
out of sight of the percipient, whose eyes were 



66 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

also bandaged. It would take too long to 
give even a summary of these experiments; 
one or two may be quoted which were made 
in Dr. Herdman's rooms — 

Object : a pair of scissors partly open, points 
downwards. Percipient says, " It is a pair of 
scissors standing up, a little open." Object : 
A key. Percipient : " It's bright, it looks like 
a key." Told to draw it, the percipient 
drew it inverted. Object : Outline drawing of 
a little flag. Percipient : " It's a little flag." 
Told to draw it, she drew it as it was, upright, 
but laterally inverted. The frequent lateral 
inversion of objects by other percipients I have 
also noticed. A different drawing was next 
made, but put aside and purposely the drawing 
of the flag again put up. Percipient : "I 
still see that flag." Object : An oval locket 
hung up. Percipient : "I see something 
gold, something hanging, like a gold locket." 
Asked what shape, " It's oval." 

An interesting experiment was made with 
success to try the effect of two agents looking 
at different objects and to note if the percipi- 
ent saw the combined result. This experi- 
ment, made by Sir O. Lodge, was described 
by him in a letter to Nature of June 12, 1884. 
This simultaneous effect of two minds on one 
percipient is significant, as it affords a proof 
of the joint agency, occasionally found to 
occur in connection with spontaneous cases 
of telepathy that will be considered later. 

The transference of colours and scenes was 
also more or less successful, and these all 



THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE 67 

point to a visual impression made on the 
percipient. More striking were the reproduc- 
tion of rough drawings, obtained by Mr. Guth- 
rie, Mr. Gurney and other experimenters ; these 
cannot be reproduced here, and our readers 
are referred to the Proceedings of the S.P.R., 
vols. ii. and hi., or to Mr. Myers 5 Human Person- 
ality, vol. i., where illustrations of the original 
drawing and its reproduction by the percipient 
are given side by side. To avoid the possi- 
bility of muscular guidance, no contact can 
ever be allowed between the agent and per- 
cipient in such experiments. The drawings 
were made for the most part in another room, 
and consisted of any simple random figure 
that occurred to the investigator, such, for 
example, as a tuning-fork, a scroll, dumb- 
bells, the outline of a head, a horse, a fish, etc. 
The percipient was blindfolded, the drawing 
placed on a wooden stand between the agent 
and percipient and in silence gazed at by the 
former. When the percipient received an 
impression, which usually occurred after half- 
a-minute to two or three minutes, she was 
allowed to remove the bandage and draw 
what she had mentally perceived. Her 
position rendered it absolutely impossible 
for her to obtain a glimpse of the original 
drawing, and she was kept under the closest 
observation the whole time and complete 
silence preserved. Under these stringent 
conditions many of the reproductions closely 
resembled the original drawing, and by no 
possibility could be ascribed to lucky guesses. 



68 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

Summing up the result of the numerous 
Liverpool experiments, Mr. Guthrie states 
that 437 trials were made with objects, colours, 
drawings, numbers, pains, tastes, etc. ; of 
these 237 were correctly transferred and a 
few others partly correct. Entire corrobor- 
ation of these results have been obtained 
by many other independent and competent 
observers, both at home and abroad. Hence 
though not yet officially recognized by science, 
no doubt of the reality of thought-trans- 
ference can be left on the mind of any diligent 
and thoughtful student, however critical he 
may be. This conviction is greatly strength- 
ened by the additional evidence to be found (1) 
in experiments during the hypnotic state, to 
which we must turn in the next chapter, and 
(2) by the transmission of mental impressions 
and hallucinations over great distances. It was 
the recognition of this latter fact that led Mr. 
Myers to suggest the general term Telepathy, 
" feeling at a distance," to cover, as he remarks, 
" all cases of the communication of impressions 
of any kind from one mind to another indepen- 
dently of the recognized channels of sense. 
Telepathy may thus exist between two men 
in the same room as truly as between one 
man in England and another in Australia, 
or between one still living on earth and another 
long since deceased. " 

The tremendous and far-reaching implica- 
tions involved in the fact of telepathy renders 
its discovery of the utmost importance to 
philosophical and religious thought, as well 



THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE 69 

as to psychology. These implications can- 
not be discussed here; obviously telepathy 
renders a purely materialistic philosophy 
untenable, and furnishes the prospect of a 
far more perfect interchange of thought than 
by the clumsy mechanism of speech. It 
affords a rational basis for prayer and inspira- 
tion, and gives us a distant glimpse of the 
possibility of communion without language 
not only between men of various races and 
tongues, but between every sentient creature, 
which if not attainable here may await us all 
in that future state when we shall " know 
even as we are known. 5 ' 



CHAPTER VI 

THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE IN THE 
HYPNOTIC STATE 

The older mesmerists had noticed sixty 
or seventy years ago that there sometimes 
occurred a " community of sensation " between 
the operator and the entranced subject; 
the latter indicating correctly the taste of 
various articles such as salt, sugar, cinnamon, 
etc., which the operator placed in his own 
mouth, unseen by the percipient. A former 
distinguished Professor of Physiology, both in 
King's College and in the Royal College of 
Surgeons, London, Dr. Mayo, F.R.S., whose 
enlightened views were far ahead of his 
scientific friends, writing in 1850, confirms 
this. He tells us — 

" The entranced person, who has no feeling 
or taste or smell of his own, feels, tastes, and 
smells everything that is made to tell on the 
sense of the operator. If mustard or sugar 
be put in his [the subject's] own mouth he 
seems not to know they are there ; if mustard 
is placed on the tongue of the operator the 
entranced person expresses great disgust and 
tries to spit it out. The same with bodily 
pain. If you pluck a hair from the operator's 
70 



THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE 71 

head, the other complains of the pain you have 
given him." 

These results were confirmed by other 
observers both in England and abroad, but, 
strangely enough, the significance of these 
observations was long overlooked. The atten- 
tion of the pioneers in hypnotic investigation 
was, in fact, largely confined to the therapeutic 
and ansesthetic effect of hypnotism, and to 
combating the prejudices and unscrupulous 
attacks with which they were assailed in the 
medical press of that period. 

My own attention was directed to the sub- 
ject by witnessing some hypnotic experiments 
made by a friend whilst staying at his country 
house in Westmeath, about the year 1870. 
Fresh from the Royal Institution in London, 
conversant with and fully sharing the scep- 
ticism of the scientific world of that time, as 
to the genuineness of these alleged marvels, 
I was interested but unconvinced by the 
experiments which I witnessed. It was not 
until my host allowed me to repeat the experi- 
ments and to choose the subjects myself that 
my scepticism gave way. Selecting two or 
three of the village children, they were placed 
in a quiet room, a scrap of paper was put in 
the palms of their hands, and they were told 
to gaze at it steadily. One of their number 
soon passed into a sleep-waking state, and 
became susceptible to any suggestion, however 
absurd, which I might make. The others 
were dismissed, and the sensitive subject put 
into a deeper sleep by a few passes of my hand 



72 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

down her face and body. Lifting the eyelid 
of the subject and touching the eye with my 
finger, no reflex action, or instinctive contrac- 
tion, occurred. The eyeball was turned up- 
wards and the subject apparently was in 
profound slumber. Pricking her hand with a 
needle, no sign of feeling was evoked. My 
host had a medical induction coil by which 
powerful shocks could be administered; the 
terminals were placed in the hands and on 
the cheeks of the subject, and the current 
applied; no notice was taken of shocks 
that in the normal state it would have been 
impossible to bear with equanimity. When 
her name was called loudly by others than 
myself no reply was given, but when I whis- 
pered her name, however faintly, or even 
inaudibly and outside the room, an instant 
response was given. Collecting a number of 
things from the pantry on to a table near me, 
and standing behind the girl, whose eyes I 
had securely bandaged, I took up some salt 
and put it in my mouth ; instantly she sputtered 
and exclaimed, " What for are you putting salt 
in my mouth ? " Then I tried sugar ; she said, 
" That's better " ; asked what it was like, she 
said, " Sweet." Then mustard, pepper, ginger, 
etc., were tried; each was named, and appar- 
ently tasted by the girl when I put them in 
my own mouth, but when placed in her 
mouth she seemed to disregard them. Put- 
ting my hand over a lighted candle and slightly 
burning it, the subject, who was still blind- 
folded and had her back to me, instantly 



THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE 73 

called out her hand was burnt, and showed 
evident pain. Nor did it make any differ- 
ence when I repeated these experiments in 
an adjoining room, nor when every one was 
excluded from the room but myself and the 
subject. 

On another occasion, after hypnotizing the 
girl as before, I took a card at random from 
a pack in another room, noted what it was, 
placed it within a book, and giving the 
closed book to the subject asked her if she 
could see what was inside. She made no 
attempt to open the book, but held it to the 
side of her head and said there was something 
" with red spots on it." I told her to count 
the spots, and she said there were " five." 
The card was, in fact, the five of diamonds. 
Other cards chosen by me and concealed in a 
similar way were, for the most part, correctly 
described, though sometimes she failed, saying 
the things were dim. One of the most in- 
teresting experiments was made when in 
answer to my request that she would mentally 
visit London and go to Regent Street, she 
correctly described the optician's shop of 
which I was thinking. As a matter of fact, 
I found, upon subsequent inquiry, that the 
girl had never gone fifty miles away from her 
remote Irish village. Nevertheless, not only 
did she correctly describe the position of this 
shop, but told me of some large crystals of 
Iceland spar (" that made things look double ") 
which I knew were in the shop, and that a big 
clock hung outside over the entrance, as was 



74 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

the case. It was impossible for the subject to 
gain any information of these facts through 
the ordinary channels of sense, as there was 
no conversation about the matter. My friend, 
the late Mr. W. E. Wilson, F.R.S., was present 
when these experiments were made in his 
father's house, and in answer to my request 
he subsequently wrote to me confirming them, 
saying, " We proved beyond all doubt that the 
subject was able to read the thoughts of the 
mesmerizer." 

The evidence, in fact, appeared so incon- 
testable and of such vast importance if estab- 
lished, that I ventured to bring these and other 
psychical phenomena that had come under 
my own observation before the British Associa- 
tion in 1876, with a view to the appointment 
of experts to investigate and report on the 
whole subject, but the idea was scorned at the 
time. The following sentence from that paper 
of thirty-five years ago may here be quoted — ■ 

" In many other ways I convinced myself 
that the existence of a distinct idea in my own 
mind gave rise to an image of the idea in the 
subject's mind; not always a clear image, but 
one that could not fail to be recognized as a 
more or less distorted reflection of my own 
thought. The important point is that every 
care was taken to prevent any unconscious 
movement of the lips, or otherwise giving any 
indication to the subject, although one could 
hardly reveal the contents of an optician's shop 
by facial indications'- (Proc. S.P.B., vol. i., 
p. 243). 



THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE 75 

In these early experiments I noticed that 
the hypnotized subject responded to thought- 
transference even when a considerable distance 
and opaque objects intervened. Later on, in 
1882, some careful experiments on this point 
were made by me in my own house at Kings- 
town, Co. Dublin. Here the subject was a 
lad named Fearnley, and the hypnotizer, a 
complete stranger to him, was a friend, Mr. 
G. A. Smith. On one of two precisely similar 
cards I wrote the word " Yes," and on the 
other "No." Placing the hypnotized subject 
or percipient so that he could not see the cards 
I held, a request was made that he would open 
his hand if the card " Yes " was shown to the 
agent, Mr. Smith, or not open it if "No " was 
pointed to. In this way Mr. Smith, who was 
not in contact with the percipient, silently 
willed in accordance with the card shown to 
him. Twenty experiments were made, under 
the strictest conditions to avoid any pos- 
sibility of information being gained by the 
ordinary channels of sense, and only three 
failures resulted. Then the subject was re- 
quested to answer aloud whether he heard 
me or not. When "Yes" was handed to 
Mr. Smith he silently willed the subject should 
hear,' when " No " that he should not hear. 
The object was to reduce the experiment to 
the simplest form to try the effect of increasing 
distance. In all except the first few experi- 
ments, the cards were shuffled by me with 
their face downwards, and then the unknown 
card handed by me to Mr. Smith, who looked 



76 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

at it and willed accordingly. This precaution 
was taken to avoid any possible indication 
being gained by the percipient from the tone 
in which I asked the question. After I had 
noted the reply, and not till then, was the 
card looked at by me. The percipient re- 
mained throughout motionless, with eyes 
closed and apparently asleep in an arm-chair 
in one corner of my study ; it is needless to 
repeat that even had he been wide awake he 
had no means whatever of seeing which card 
was selected by me. Here are the results, 
with varying distances between the agent, 
Mr. Smith, and the percipient, Fearnley. It 
must be borne in mind that not a single word 
was spoken, nor any sound made by Mr. 
Smith. 

" At 3 feet apart, twenty-five trials were suc- 
cessively made, and in every case the subject 
responded, or did not respond, in exact accord- 
ance with the silent will of Mr. Smith, as 
directed by the card selected. At 6 feet apart 
six similar trials were made without a single 
failure. At 12 feet apart six more trials were 
made without a single failure. At 17 feet 
apart six more trials were made without a 
single failure. In this last case Mr. Smith 
had to be placed outside the study door, which 
was then closed with the exception of a narrow 
chink just wide enough to admit of passing a 
card in or out, whilst I remained in the study 
observing the subject. 

" A final experiment was made when Mr. 
Smith was taken across the hall and placed in 



THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE 77 

the dining-room, at a distance of about SO feet 
from the subject, two doors, both quite closed, 
intervening. Under these conditions three 
trials were made with success, the ' Yes ' 
response being, however, very faint and hardly 
audible to me when I returned to the study 
to ask the usual question after handing the 
card to the distant operator. At this point, 
the subject fell into a deep sleep and made 
no further replies to the questions addressed 
to him" (Proc. S.P.R., vol. ii., p. 14). 

Subsequently other trials were made under 
different conditions with the percipient in 
total darkness, with successful results. Alto- 
gether about one hundred trials were made, 
during which there were only four wrong 
answers and one doubtful one, and for these 
Mr. Smith blamed himself rather than the 
percipient. Pure chance would have given 
about one-half right instead of the ninety-five 
right actually obtained. 

When the subject was awakened he said 
he had heard the question each time, but 
when he gave no answer he felt unable 
to control his muscles so as to frame the 
word. 

In 1883 Mr. Ed. Gurney made a number 
of excellent experiments on the mental trans- 
ference of pains, between the hypnotizer, 
Mr. Smith, and the subject, in this case a lad 
named Wells. I was present at many of 
these experiments, and can testify that it was 
quite impossible for the subject to have ob- 
tained any information through the ordinary 



78 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

channels of sense. Wells was blindfolded and 
Mr. Smith stood behind his chair. Mr. Gurney, 
or one of us, then silently pricked or pinched 
Mr. Smith in different parts of his body. The 
only words spoken were " Do you feel any- 
thing ? " addressed to Wells. Out of twenty- 
four experiments made in this way, the exact 
spot was correctly indicated by the subject 
twenty times. With another subject also in 
a light hypnotic trance similar results were 
obtained, together with the transference of 
tastes. Whenever Mr. Smith was given a 
substance to put in his mouth, the subject, 
in nearly all cases, correctly indicated the 
taste. These and other experiments abun- 
dantly confirmed the results already described. 

In France Professor Pierre Janet obtained 
similar results with a hypnotized subject in 
1885 and 1886. Professor Janet and Dr. 
Gibert also made a series of experiments with 
a sensitive subject at distances varying from 
a quarter of a mile to a mile. Here the test 
was the production of hypnotic trance in the 
subject whenever the distant operator willed 
it to occur, at some unexpected time. Out 
of twenty-five trials eighteen were completely 
successful, and the remainder partially so. It 
is needless to refer to the numerous other ex- 
periments of a similar kind made by able and 
critical observers abroad. 

Perhaps the most carefully conducted and 
extensive series of experiments upon thought- 
transference with a subject in the hypnotic 
state were those made at Brighton in 1889 



THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE 79 

by Professor and Mrs. Sidgwick. As usual, 
the most provoking and inexplicable variations 
of success occurred on different days, when 
the conditions appeared to be exactly alike; 
thus on August 16 and 17 the experiments 
were a brilliant success, whereas on August 
19, 20 and 21 they were total failures. These 
differences could not be accounted for on 
grounds of health, etc., for sometimes a run 
of success would begin and then abruptly 
cease. 

The percipient was a clerk, about nineteen 
years old, designated as P. To avoid any bias 
in the selection of the numbers to be guessed, 
the wooden counters of the game of Lotto, 
which had the numbers from 10 to 90 stamped 
on them, were put into a bag and one drawn 
out; as there were thus eighty-one different 
numbers, mere chance guessing would give 
only one right in eighty-one trials. After the 
first few trials, Professor Sidgwick drew the 
number from the bag, placed it in a little box, 
and handed it, unseen by the percipient, to 
Mr. Smith, who kept strict silence; Mrs. 
Sidgwick recorded the answer in entire ignor- 
ance of the number drawn. It made no 
difference whether the percipient P. was blind- 
folded or not, as in the hypnotic state, during 
these experiments, his eyeballs were turned 
upward, his eyelids closed, and normal vision 
was impossible ; even so, every precaution was 
taken to prevent any information being derived 
through the ordinary channels of sense. The 
percipient speaks of " seeing " the numbers, 



80 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

but this is purely a mental visualization. Here 
is a summary of one set of experiments so made, 
giving the number drawn in ordinary type, the 
number guessed in italics : — 

87, almost immediately P. said 87; 19, P. 
18; 24, P. I see an 8 and a 4—84; 35, P. a 3 
and a 5— So; 28, P. 88; 20, P. 83 ("not so 
plain, I saw the 2 best ") ; 27, P. I see a 7 and 
I think a 3 in front of it, I can see the 7 ; 48, 
P. I see an 8. Told to look again, P. said he 
saw a 4— the 4 to the left, 48; 20, P. and 0; 
71, P. 77; 38, P. 8 . . . SS; 75, P. I see a 7 
and a 5 — 7 o ; 17, P. after seeing a ^, said, I 
see a 1 first and 7 second; 52, P. 52, I saw 
that at once ; 76, P. 76. 

This is a record of a continuous set of experi- 
ments ; the total number of trials made when 
the agent and percipient were in the same 
room was 644, of which 131 were complete 
successes, both digits being given correctly, 
and in fourteen trials the digits were given in 
the reverse order. Pure guesswork would 
have given about eight right, so that mere 
chance coincidence cannot account for the 
success obtained. In a later series of experi- 
ments, carried on from 1890 to 1892, by Mrs. 4 
Sidgwick and Miss Johnson, the agent and 
percipient were in different rooms and strict 
silence was preserved. I was invited to be 
present at some of these trials, and can there- 
fore say from personal observation that the 
possibility of any information being gained by 
the percipient, through unconscious whisper- 
ing of the number, seemed to me to be quite 



THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE 81 

excluded, however acute his sense of hearing. 
The transference of mental pictures, also with 
more or less success, was subsequently tried 
under the same conditions, and by the same 
experimenters with different percipients. 



CHAPTER VII 

MESMERISM — HYPNOTISM — SUGGESTION 

To most people, any acquaintance with 
mesmerism they possess is confined to those 
public exhibitions — common enough a genera- 
tion ago, and usually called by the barbarous 
word " electro-biology " — where some of the 
audience are invited to the platform and made 
to look at a small object placed in their hands, 
whilst passes are repeatedly made by the 
operator down the body of the subject. 
Presently two or three fall into a sleep 
and readily obey any suggestions, however 
ridiculous, made by the operator. In this 
way the subject can be made to believe he 
is another person, or any bird or animal sug- 
gested, often exhibiting a wonderful dramatic 
power in carrying out the suggestion. Other 
curious phenomena were occasionally shown 
by the subject when in a deeper entranced 
state, such as complete insensibility to pain 
in any part of or over the whole body, while, 
on the other hand, he would sometimes 
exhibit an amazing exaltation of any special 
sense; feeling or detecting things impossible 
for him to perceive in his ordinary waking 
state. On returning to his normal state, to 

82 



MESMERISM— HYPNOTISM 83 

which he was restored by upward passes 
and a command from the operator to "wake 
up," he was utterly oblivious of everything 
that had occurred during his entranced 
condition and was incredulous when informed 
of what he had said or done. To the general 
public such performances only excited specu- 
lation as to their genuineness, and little 
regard was paid to the far-reaching psycho- 
logical problems involved. Let us briefly 
recall the history of the subject. 

The remarkable phenomena of mesmerism 
originated with a Viennese doctor, Friedrich 
Mesmer, a Swiss, born in 1733. Mesmer 
claimed to have discovered a new vital fluid 
or effluence, which could be transmitted from 
one person to another and which, he asserted, 
had wonderful curative power. At that time 
the physical forces of electricity, magnetism, 
heat, etc., were attributed to various im- 
palpable fluids, and Mesmer believed he had 
found a new fluid or force associated with 
life, resembling magnetism : hence he called 
it " animal magnetism." Whether such an 
effluence exists or not, it certainly has nothing 
to do with magnetism as the latter is known 
to physical science ; nevertheless, the misnomer 
still widely exists. 

In 1778 Mesmer came to Paris to demon- 
strate his new system of therapeutics. The 
use of drugs and other prevalent medical 
remedies were abandoned and the patients 
submitted to a treatment which looked very 
like quackery. Seated round a mysterious 



84 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

tub of water, in which were rows of bottles, 
the patients, rich and poor, were linked 
together by a rope from the tub, and iron 
rods proceeding therefrom were brought into 
contact with the diseased part, whilst Mesmer 
and his assistants stroked or massaged the 
patient. Partial darkness and the subdued 
strains of music added to the mystery. But 
the results were extraordinary, numerous 
amazing cures were effected, and Paris rang 
with the fame of Mesmer. The patients were 
mostly of high standing and included some 
physicians of note, one of whom, a " doctor 
regent," became Mesmer' s enthusiastic advo- 
cate and helper. In one year it is said that 
8,000 persons were so treated, and the record of 
the cures wrought could neither be explained, 
nor explained away, by the medical profession. 
A medical commission was appointed in 1784 
to report on the whole subject. This com- 
mission, which included some famous members 
of the Paris Academy of Sciences, was un- 
favourable to Mesmer and his fluid theory, 
attributing the cures to imagination. But 
the commission was much prejudiced against 
Mesmer, owing to the secrecy and charlatan- 
ism with which he had surrounded his system. 
Mesmer thereupon left Paris, followed by 
numerous patients, and subsequently died in 
obscurity in Switzerland. 

Among Mesmer's disciples was the Marquis 
de Puysegur, who brought a more critical 
and scientific spirit to bear upon the subject. 
Puysegur ultimately believed the secret of the 



MESMERISM— HYPNOTISM 85 

cures — which could not be gainsaid, though 
they were practically ignored by the medical 
commission — to be, as he states, in " belief and 
will " or " the action of thought upon the 
vital principle of the body." This, in fact, is 
generally recognized, and lies at the foundation 
of Faith Cures, Christian Science, and the 
cures wrought in ancient Greece and Rome 
by what is now termed Suggestive treatment. 
Puysegur also discovered the state of somnam- 
bulism induced in susceptible patients by 
Mesmer's system. Such patients were thrown 
into a state of trance wherein another per- 
sonality with clearer vision and higher facul- 
ties appeared to emerge, able to diagnose 
their own illness, even prescribe for its treat- 
ment, and foresee the date of cure. On 
returning to their normal state, not the 
slightest memory of what had passed in the 
trance state remained. Though unquestion- 
able evidence exists of this " lucidity " of the 
entranced patient, it is impossible to say how 
far the results were merely due to a heightened 
but normal sensitiveness, i. e. hyperesthesia, 
or to so-called clairvoyance, which we shall 
discuss in another chapter. 

A later French Medical Commission, ap- 
pointed in 1826, reported in favour of this 
clairvoyant faculty and of the remarkable 
cures effected by mesmerism. This report was, 
however, suppressed by the medical faculty 
and issued informally. Meanwhile the sub- 
ject had been lifted into a different and modern 
line of thought by the investigations of an 



86 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

able French physician, Dr. A. Bertrand, who 
in 1820 published a treatise on artificial som- 
nambulism, in which he sweeps away the idea 
of animal magnetism and a vital fluid, and 
attributes the extraordinary mesmeric cures 
to the influence of suggestion on the patient, 
who, by the treatment, is made preternaturally 
alive to the faintest suggestion expressed, or 
even unexpressed, by the operator. Bertrand, 
however, records that in the trance state 
the subjects have unquestionably a marked 
exaltation of their intellectual powers, appar- 
ently enabling them to gain a knowledge and 
prevision of their malady, often a marvel- 
lous appreciation of time, and a community 
of sensation between operator and subject. 
It is also alleged that a state of clairvoy- 
ance, or seeing without eyes, was sometimes 
exhibited. Moreover, and this had been 
largely overlooked before, complete anaes- 
thesia, or absence of sensation, was induced 
in the entranced subject. 

These were marvels enough and testified to by 
weighty authority, albeit they were in general 
discredited by the medical profession. Up to 
this time England had held aloof from the 
subject, regarding it with extreme disfavour. 
But, in 1838, an eminent London medical 
man, Dr. Elliotson — then professor at, and 
senior physician to, University College Hos- 
pital — having been convinced by some mes- 
meric experiments he had witnessed, took 
up the subject with characteristic energy and 
enthusiasm. He founded a mesmeric hospital 



MESMERISM— HYPNOTISM 87 

in London, and also a journal called the Zoist, 
which for thirteen years was the organ of the 
medical mesmerists — its pages recording not 
only the extraordinary cures wrought by 
mesmerism, but also many of the more 
startling phenomena, such as the community 
of sensation between the operator and his 
subject, and the clairvoyance noticed by 
the early French investigators. In spite of 
his high standing, Elliotson's advocacy of 
mesmerism caused him to be ostracized by 
the medical profession, led to the loss of his 
practice, and compelled him to resign the high 
official positions he held. The same fate 
followed Dr. Esdaile, an able surgeon in India, 
appointed, by the Governor- General, Presi- 
dency Surgeon at Calcutta. In his six years' 
practice in India, and in the mesmeric hospital 
he opened in Calcutta, Esdaile performed no less 
than 261 serious operations on patients when 
under the mesmeric trance, some 200 tumours 
were removed, varying from 10 to 103 pounds 
in weight ! Not the slightest pain was felt in 
any case, and nearly all made a good recovery, 
the mortality under such operations being 
reduced from 50 to 8 per cent. The discovery 
of chloroform was made about this period; the 
ease of administering and the certainty of the 
operation of this ansesthetic, compared with 
the tedious and often uncertain induction of 
the mesmeric trance, led to its general adop- 
tion, though cases undoubtedly arise where it 
would be far safer to employ the mesmeric 
trance. The profession, however, would have 



88 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

nothing to do with mesmerism, and hounded 
out of its ranks any practitioner, however 
eminent, who ventured to use what the Lancet, 
in 1848, called " this odious fraud." 

Hitherto the mesmerists were possessed by 
the idea of a peculiar fluid, communicated 
to the patient by the passes they employed. 
Dr. Braid, a Manchester physician, in 1843 
showed that a patient could be entranced 
simply by gazing at a bright object. Braid 
called this process hypnotism, from the Greek 
word for sleep, and this term has now replaced 
the word mesmerism, which connotes a special 
theory. As was the case with the older 
mesmerists, Braid found at first surprising 
support for the doctrine of phrenology, when 
his patients were entranced; slight pressure 
on different parts of the head giving rise to 
the exhibition of mental characteristics in the 
subject, corresponding with the location of 
the so-called organs of language, laughter, 
etc., with which phrenologists had mapped 
out the skull ! Though the results, which I 
myself have repeated, are very curious, Jthe 
cause is obscure and may arise from telepathy 
or some unconscious suggestion (as Braid sub- 
sequently believed) conveyed to the subject 
by the operator. 

On the Continent, somewhat later, dis- 
tinguished physiologists, like Professor C. 
Richet, and physicians of note, such as 
Dr. Charcot, Liebault, Bernheim and others, 
took up the investigation, added largely to 
our knowledge, and founded schools for the 



MESMERISM— HYPNOTISM 89 

study and practice of hypnotism. At Nancy 
and elsewhere hypnotic treatment is used 
in the hospitals, and the value of this 
remedial agent is now generally recognized. 
In England, we owe to Dr. Milne Bramwell 
and Dr. Lloyd Tuckey the publication of 
standard medical works on hypnotism, or 
treatment by suggestion. This is not the 
place to pursue the medical side of the 
question any further ; it will be sufficient to 
say that the popular aversion to hypnotism 
as a dangerous process is entirely baseless. 
Its practice as a remedial agent should, how- 
ever, be restricted wholly to qualified medical 
men, just as is the use of chloroform or other 
powerful narcotics. 

Moreover, the incontestable cures effected 
by hypnotism, often when other means had 
failed, do not always require the subject to be 
entranced; monotonous and repeated sugges- 
tion can produce the effect even when the 
patient remains fully conscious. ^ i ^'»vktf. 

In fact, an American practitioner (Proa 
S.P.R., vol. xii.) treats his patients byj 
silent suggestion, and has published a record 
of remarkable cures effected in this way, 
which closely resembles the Christian Science 
i *' treatment at a distance," by their healers. 
4M History is full of the miracles of healing jf* * 
I wrought by suggestion. Qreatrakes in the irJ ~_^ 
seventeenth century, Gasner in the eighteenth, 
Prince Hohenlohe, and other notable faith- 
healers, in the nineteenth, all accomplished 
wonderful cures without medical skill. To 



90 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

say they were due to " suggestion " is merely 
to conceal our ignorance of the processes 
involved. Suggestion no more explains the 
results than the crack of the starting pistol 
explains a race. Both are simply signals for 
a new departure. The suggestion given by 
the operator liberates the subconscious, re- 
cuperative, and formative forces within the 
organism of the patient. Success consists 
in overcoming the difficulty of setting these 
forces at work, and often the most effective 
way is, as it were, by a flank movement, an 
indirect suggestion, and not a direct assault. 
That there is a hidden self below the threshold 
of consciousness, the subliminal self, has, 
we think, been abundantly proved : medical 
and psychological research in the future will 
doubtless throw more light on this strange and 
silent partner of our life. 

Some of the most remarkable cures effected 
by hypnotic treatment have been in the region 
of habits and morals. The drunkard has been 
made sober, the idle industrious, and insidious 
drug habits overcome. In the dissolution of 
self-respect, peculiar to the victims of such 
habits, there seems to be, as Mr. Myers 
remarks, " nothing on which sage or evangelist 
can lay hold. Yet we have seen hypnotic 
suggestion effect the magical change and 
restore the degraded outcast to a safe 
and honourable position among his fellow 
men." 

The investigation of hypnotism from the 
point of view of psychical research was begun 



MESMERISM— HYPNOTISM 91 

by Mr. Gurney soon after the foundation of the 
S.P.R., and his brilliant work in this direction 
is of enduring value. Gurney distinguished 
three stages in hypnosis — first, the alert stage, 
when the subject will, when requested, open 
his eyes, answer questions but cannot 
originate remarks, is generally sensitive to 
pain and will respond to any suggestion, even 
when he is half conscious he is making a fool 
of himself ; next, the deep stage, into which he 
will pass with eyeballs rolled upwards, insensi- 
tive to pain, but mentally active; this stage 
quickly lapses into a profound sleep and 
irresponsiveness. 

One of the most curious phenomena — the 
appreciation, of time by the hypnotized subject 
— was tested by Gurney, and also by myself, 
nearly thirty years ago. A subject was 
hypnotized and told to wake up in a certain 
number of minutes and then write his name. 
There was no timepiece in the room and the 
subject had no watch. At the precise minute 
he woke and mechanically wrote his name, 
wholly ignorant why he did so, nothing being 
remembered of the command when the sub- 
ject was awake. Again and again we tried, 
with periods of longer duration, such as 
thirty-two, fifty-five, and ninety-six minutes; 
there was not the least mistake and no means 
of his gaining any knowledge of the time 
by ordinary perception. Dr. Milne Bramwell 
has, in recent years, carried this experiment 
much further. It is simply necessary to 
give the command when the patient is in the 



92 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

trance, tell him to write his name, or do any 
simple thing, at a given time, and then wake 
him up. When questioned he knows nothing 
of what he has been ordered to do, but never- 
theless fulfils it exactly at the required time. 
Thus Dr. Bramwell told a female patient when 
entranced to make a cross on a piece of paper 
at the end of 7,200 minutes, and mark down 
the time she then thought it was without 
looking at the timepiece. The time fell due 
when the patient was teaching a Sunday- 
school class. §he_ suddenly felt an impulse to 
make a cross jand mark the time. It was only 
on~looking round at a clock behind her that 
she found the time was right ; the number of 
minutes had also been estimated with perfect 
correctness. Another time she was told, when 
entranced, to make a cross in 10,070 minutes. 
This suggestion fell due when she was subse- 
quently hypnotized by Dr. Bramwell and had 
no means of seeing the time. Nevertheless, 
exactly at the assigned moment she made a 
cross and wrote down the correct time. Out 
of fifty-five similar experiments, forty-five 
were perfectly successful and only two not 
fulfilled. Dr. Mitchell, a Fellow of the Royal 
Society of Medicine, and a member of the 
Council of the S.P.R., has since corroborated 
these results by a large number of well-con- 
ducted experiments which were uniformly 
successful, though the time interval was some- 
times over 200,000 minutes, and sometimes 
given in many thousand seconds. 

How are these results to be explained ? 



MESMERISM— HYPNOTISM 93 

There is no question of fraud, continental ob- 
servers having obtained the same remarkable 
results under test conditions. If hypnotized 
before the command is fulfilled, the subject 
will remember the order given and tell the 
precise number of days, hours and minutes 
required to fulfil it. Thus, during hypnosis, 
being told to make a cross in 4,580 minutes 
and asked how long this was, a subject replied 
immediately, three days four hours and twenty 
minutes, which is correct, but could not say 
how she made the calculation ; the order was 
accurately fulfilled at the stated time. The 
whole process goes on through the operation of 
a subconscious intelligence. Possibly the stated 
time is reckoned, and the time as it passes is 
noted, unconsciously. On the other hand, the 
time of fulfilment sometimes falls due when 
the patient is asleep, nevertheless, she awakes 
at the correct moment and carries out the 
command. In the few experiments I made 
long ago, the hypnotized subject, when en- 
tranced, told me he watched the time by a 
large clock he saw. There was no clock in 
the room, nor any clock visible from the 
window ; on asking which clock, he said that 
on the tower of the Houses of Parliament — 
about a quarter of a mile away and impossible 
to see from the rooms we were in. This 
suggests that some clairvoyant faculty is 
unconsciously exercised by the subject, and 
this may possibly be the case. Mr Myers 
quotes a case where a person, in his ordinary 
waking state, occasionally had a similar vision 



94 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

of an invisible clock face and saw the exact 
time thereon. 

Some people have the faculty of awaking 
exactly at the definite time they have agreed 
upon overnight; here the time-sense, when 
not due to a habit, must be a subconscious 
estimate of the efflux of time. 

The singular exaltation of the intellectual 
powers in particular directions is characteristic 
of many subjects when hypnotized. Thus a 
rather dull lad, during hypnosis, was asked, 
in my presence, how many times the letter c 
occurred on a page of print suddenly placed 
before him, and answered correctly after a 
shorter interval than one could count the 
number of times that that letter occurred in 
a couple of lines. Other experiments were 
long sums in arithmetic, correctly and swiftly 
done, during hypnosis, which the subject had 
failed to do in a longer time in the normal 
state. Again (and these were all private 
experiments, no question of trickery coming 
in), another subject was asked by me to add 
up a long row of figures I had jotted down at 
random and, at the same time, to count aloud 
the odd numbers up to 100. Roth acts 
were correctly, quickly, and simultaneously 
performed; many other similar experiments 
were made, illustrating the wonderful exalta- 
tion and even dual activity of the mind in 
the hypnotized subject. These experiments 
remind us of the case of the calculating boys, 
to which reference has been made in a previous 
chapter. 



MESMERISM— HYPNOTISM 95 

Another remarkable feature in the hypnotic 
trance is that hallucinations can be provoked 
either during the trance, or subsequently to it, 
by a command from the operator. Thus an 
entranced subject, on being told he would see 

his friend B at a certain time after he 

woke up, when the time came actually 
believed he had met and clearly seen the 
person named, and related the fact to others, 

though fully aware B was at that time in 

America or elsewhere. These " post-hypnotic " 
hallucinations are of great theoretical interest 
in psychical research, as showing that lifelike 
phantasms can be created by pure suggestion. 



CHAPTER VIII 

EXPERIMENTAL AND SPONTANEOUS TELEPATHY 
OVER LONG DISTANCES 

The next question that presents itself is, 
how jar can telepathic impressions be con- 
veyed ? We have already referred to numer- 
ous successful trials in the hypnotic state when 
considerable distances separated the operator 
and the subject. In the waking state, experi- 
ments have been quoted showing that success 
has attended trials when the agent and per- 
cipient have been separated by closed doors 
and were some yards apart. 

A few successful experiments were made in 
1892 between two ladies, Miss Despard and Miss 
Campbell, when the distance was much greater. 
The trials were made not only a mile or two 
apart in London, but also when the former 
was at Surbiton and the latter in London : 
the experiments were published by the S.P.R., 
but must be omitted here from want of space. 
The Rev. A. Glardon in Switzerland also made 
similar experiments between himself in the 
Canton Vaud and a friend in Florence. 
These are described in vol. i. of Human 
Personality, with illustrations of some of the 
diagrams thus mentally transferred, many of 
96 



TELEPATHY 97 

the correspondences being singularly good. 
But the most systematic and carefully con- 
ducted series of experiments, when the agent 
and percipient are widely separated, have been 
made by my friends, Miss H. Ramsden and 
Miss C. Miles. Full details of these experi- 
ments were published in the Journal and in 
the Proceedings of the S.P.R. for 1906, 1907 
and 1908. Miss Miles consulted me about the 
best method of conducting the experiments 
when they began, and both she and Miss 
Ramsden have been scrupulously careful 
throughout in following out the suggestions 
made. Both ladies are members or associates 
of the S.P.R., and are energetic and excellent 
investigators. The following is from the 
introduction to the first of their joint 
papers — 

" Miss Ramsden, having met with a certain 
amount of success in experiments in thought- 
transference with two other friends of hers, 
asked Miss Miles to try a systematic series 
with her. It was then arranged that Miss 
Miles, living at Egerton Gardens, London, 
S.W., should play the part of ' agent,' while 
Miss Ramsden, at her home, Bulstrode, 
Gerard's Cross, Buckinghamshire (about 
twenty miles from London), acted as ' per- 
cipient,' the times of the experiments being 
fixed by pre-arrangement. 

" Miss Miles, at the time of each experiment, 
noted in a book kept for the purpose the 
idea or image which she wished to convey, 
while Miss Ramsden wrote down each day 



98 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

the impressions that had come into her mind, 
and sent the record to Miss Miles before know- 
ing what she (Miss M.) had attempted on 
her side. Miss Miles then pasted this record 
into her book opposite her own notes, and in 
some cases added a further note explanatory 
of her circumstances at the time, to which 
it will be seen that Miss Ramsden's impres- 
sions often corresponded. Whenever it was 
possible, Miss Miles obtained confirmatory 
evidence from other persons as to the circum- 
stances that had not been noted at the time, 
and the corroboration of these persons was 
written in her book and is published." 

Having examined the documents, I can 
vouch for the conclusive evidence they afford 
of the frequent and often surprising trans- 
mission of telepathic impressions across the 
wide distances that separated the agent 
and percipient. The best results appeared to 
be obtained when there was no special effort 
made by the transmitter — confirming our 
previous inference, that it is the sub- 
conscious, the subliminal activities, and not 
the conscious intelligence, which is operative 
in these and other supernormal psychical 
phenomena. In fact, Miss Miles writes that 
she found it was much easier to impress an 
idea without specially concentrating her mind 
on it at a fixed time. 

Here, for example, is a singularly successful 
experiment of this kind. Miss Miles was 
attending a meeting of the S.P.R. on the 
afternoon of October 27, 1905, and noticed 



TELEPATHY 99 

the curious pair of spectacles worn by a 
gentleman near her. This, she thought, would 
be a good subject for her experiment with 
Miss Ramsden, and so, on returning home, 
she wrote down the word, but did not attempt 
to visualize it : " October 27. Spectacles. — 
C. M." Miss Ramsden, in Buckinghamshire, 
that evening wrote : " October 27. 7 p.m. 
Spectacles. This was the only idea that came 
to me, after waiting a long time. — H. R." 
It is difficult to imagine this to have 
been a lucky guess, for Miss Miles does not 
wear spectacles. If telepathy be denied, the 
objector can only explain the results by 
collusion. 

Here is another experiment. Miss Miles 
noted in her book as the idea she wished to 
transmit : " November 2. Hands. — C. M." 
Miss Ramsden, twenty miles away at her 
own home, wrote : " November 2. 7 p.m. I 
began to visualize a little black hand, well 
formed." (Some other impressions were also 
noted, but Miss Ramsden adds), " the hand 
was the most vivid." Miss Miles is an artist 
and was drawing in charcoal that afternoon 
the hands of a portrait; Lady Guendolen 
Ramsden was staying with her at the time and 
confirms this as follows : " Miss Miles was 
drawing the hands of the model in the after- 
noon. — Guendolen Ramsden." Two other 
witnesses also confirm this statement. 

Many other experiments were more or less 
successful, others, however, were failures ; and 
a series tried early in 1906, when Miss Ramsden 



100 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

was in Norway and Miss Miles in London, were 
almost all failures. But here there were 
disturbing circumstances, which might pos- 
sibly have accounted for the disappointing 
results. 

Another series of experiments was tried later 
the same year. Throughout this second series, 
which lasted for about a month, from October 
19 to November 14, 1906, inclusive, Miss Miles 
was again agent and Miss Ramsden percipient. 
Miss Miles was staying first near Bristol and 
afterwards near Malmesbury, Wiltshire. Miss 
Ramsden was living all the time near Kingus- 
sie, Inverness-shire, a distance of about four 
hundred miles, as the crow flies, from 
Bristol. 

The general' plan of action was that Miss 
Ramsden should keep her mind free from 
distraction *about 7 p.m. each day the experi- 
ment was tried and think of Miss Miles, then 
write down on a postcard any impression that 
she received, and post the card to Miss Miles 
the next morning. Miss Miles, on her side, 
noted briefly on a postcard the principal 
impressions made on her during the day and 
posted it to Miss Ramsden. In this series 
copies of many of the postcards were also 
posted simultaneously to me. The postcards 
were afterwards pasted together in a book 
with notes, the postmarks showing the date 
of posting. It should be added that, beyond 
knowing that her friend was staying at a 
country house near Bristol, Miss Ramsden was 
quite ignorant of Miss Miles' doings and 



TELEPATHY 101 

surroundings, never having been in that part 
of England. The results are thus summed up 
by the S.P.R. research officer — 

" Out of a total of fifteen days' experiments, 
the idea that Miss Miles was attempting to 
convey, as recorded on her postcards, appeared 
on six occasions in a complete or partial form 
among Miss Ramsden's impressions on the 
same date. But it also happened that almost 
every day some of Miss Ramsden's impressions 
represented pretty closely something that Miss 
Miles had been seeing or talking about on the 
same day. In other words, while the agent 
only succeeded occasionally in transferring 
the ideas deliberately chosen by her for the 
purpose, the percipient seemed often to have 
some sort of supernormal knowledge of her 
friend's surroundings, irrespective of what that 
friend had specially wished her to see. . . . 

" It has to be considered how many of the 
successes might be mere guesses, whose 
correctness was due to chance and not to 
telepathy. After studying all the records, 
however, it appears to us that while some of 
the coincidences of thought between the two 
experimenters are probably accidental, the 
total amount of correspondence is more than 
can be thus accounted for and points distinctly 
to the action of telepathy between them." 

This is the opinion of a skilled and severe 
critic, and it is fully borne out by a careful 
perusal of the published records. The reader 
should note that all the experiments were 
given in full, not a favourable selection, and 



102 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

that Miss Miles' record was always made 
before she heard what Miss Ramsden's impres- 
sions were. When one thinks of the thousands 
of things that might be selected for the purpose 
of the experiment, the fact of any agreement 
between the two records is suggestive, but 
when we find frequent remarkable agreements, 
the only inference is that one mind must in 
some way have communicated its impression 
to the other, four hundred miles away. 

Further, and occasionally, very striking 
evidence of long-distance telepathy is given 
in a series of experiments between the same 
two ladies during the summer of 1907. Miss 
Miles was then on a sketching tour with Lady 
Ramsden in the Ardennes, and Miss Ramsden 
was staying at her father's country house in 
the Highlands of Scotland. 

On returning to England Miss Miles went 
to Newbury in Berkshire for some painting 
lessons, and stayed in lodgings, her landlady 
having a delicate little girl in whom Miss 
Miles was much interested. Unaware of the 
existence of this child, Miss Ramsden writes 
from the Highlands on a postcard to Miss 
Miles — 

" October 31, 1907. I think you wish me 
to see a little girl with brown hair down her 
back, tied with a ribbon in the usual way. 
She is sitting at a table with her back turned 
and seems busy . . . cutting out scraps with 
a pair of scissors. She has on a white pina- 
fore, and I should guess her age to be between 
eight and twelve. — H. R." 



TELEPATHY 103 

Here is the description of the child written 
by Miss Miles' landlady, Mrs. Lovegrove : "I 
have a little girl, aged eleven, with brown hair 
tied with a ribbon ; she wears a pinafore and, 
being ill, amuses herself by cutting out scraps. 
I had along talk [about her ?] with Miss Miles 
on October 31. — L. Lovegrove." 

During the latter part of 1908, Miss Ramsden 
made numerous similar experiments on tele- 
pathy at a distance between herself, who now 
acted as " agent," and another lady who 
acted as " percipient." These experiments 
are described in the Journal of the S.P.R. for 
December 1910, and contain additional evi- 
dence of the telepathic transmission of ideas 
and mental impressions over considerable 
distances. We may, therefore, take it as 
experimentally proved, beyond reasonable 
doubt, that telepathy can bridge great dis- 
tances of space. Shakespeare, in one of his 
sonnets, anticipated this — 

(e If the dull substance of my flesh was thought, 
Injurious distance would not stop the way." 

This is a delightful anticipation for parted 
friends if telepathy became more widespread. 

Now let us pass from these direct experiments 
to spontaneous cases : that is to say, to the 
evidence afforded by numerous trustworthy 
witnesses of the occurrence of some event, 
painful or otherwise, to one person, and the 
simultaneous perception of it by another per- 
son some distance away. Here, for instance, 



104 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

is a case of a trivial occurrence, but interesting 
as illustrating how a passive state in the 
percipient, especially the transition between 
sleeping and waking, favours the reception 
and emergence into consciousness of a tele- 
pathic impact, as this appears to be. Note 
also that the incident is well attested, that 
the coincidence in time was evidently very 
close, and the account itself was sent to the 
S.P.R. on the very day that the incident 
occurred, accompanied by a letter from Mr. 
Harrison stating that " Everything happened 
exactly as stated." 

<s February 1, 1891. 

" I reside with my husband at 15 Lupton 
Street, N.W. This afternoon I was lying on 
the sofa, sound asleep, when I suddenly 
awoke, thinking I heard my husband sigh as 
if in pain. I arose immediately, expecting 
to find him in the room. He was not there, 
and, looking at my watch, I found it was half- 
past three. At six o'clock my husband came 
in. He called my attention to a bruise on 
his forehead, which was caused by his having 
knocked it against the stone steps in a Turkish 
bath. I said to him, 6 1 know when it 
happened — it was at half-past three, for I 
heard you sigh as if in pain at the time. 9 
He replied, ' Yes, that was the exact time, 
for I remember noticing the clock directly 
after.' 

" The gentleman who appends his name as 



TELEPATHY 105 

witness was present when this conversation 
took place. 

66 Louisa E. Harrison. 

" Witness : Henry Hooton, 23 Bunhill Row, 
E.C." 

A very similar case was sent to the S.P.R. 
by Mr. Ruskin. The percipient was Mrs. 
Arthur Severn, the wife of the well-known 
landscape painter, who, writing from Brant- 
wood, Coniston, states that one morning she 
woke up with a start, feeling that she had 
had a hard blow on her mouth, and with a 
distinct sense that she had been cut and her 
upper lip bleeding. She held her pocket 
handkerchief to the place, and was surprised 
when she removed it not to see any blood. 
Then she realized that nothing could have 
struck her as she lay asleep in bed and that 
it must have been a dream. Looking at her 
watch, she found it was seven o'clock, and 
hence, as her husband was not in the room, 
concluded he must have gone for an early 
sail on the lake. 

At breakfast-time, about 9.30, Mr. Severn 
came in, holding his handkerchief to his lip, 
and on being questioned told his wife that a 
sudden squall came on whilst he was in the 
boat, causing the tiller to swing round and hit 
him a severe blow on the upper lip, which was 
cut rather badly and would not stop bleeding. 
When asked when this occurred, he replied 
it must have been about seven o'clock. Mr. 
Severn corroborates this account, the fuller 



106 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

details of which are given in Phantasms of the 
Living, vol. i., p. 188. 

Many other similar cases resting on first- 
hand evidence might be quoted. Even more 
common than the telepathic transmission of 
pain are the numerous well-attested records 
where some auditory or visual impression 
has been transferred to great distances. Here 
is one such case, quoted not only for its 
brevity, but also because a written record of 
the incident was made and sent off by the 
percipient before anything was known of 
what had really occurred. 

Miss King, at Exeter, one Sunday morning 
at four o'clock, was awakened by hearing the 
words, "Come to me, Trix; I'm so ill." She 
stated to the S.P.R. research officer, Miss 
Johnson, who investigated the case, that it 
was just like a real person speaking, and she 
recognized the voice as that of her friend Miss 
Ridd, who was the only person that called her 
" Trix," and she felt it could be no one else. 
She was so much impressed that the same day 
she wrote to Miss Ridd — who was then in 
London, two hundred miles away — and related 
the incident. Miss Ridd, by return of post, re- 
plied as follows, in a letter which had been kept 
and was shown : " I didn't mean to tell you 
about it, but the coincidence is so strange I 
must. Sunday morning about four o'clock I 
had an awfully bad pain, and thought I was 
going to die for a few minutes ; when I could 
speak, I stretched out my arms to your photo 
and said, ' My Trix, come to me ; I'm so ill, 



TELEPATHY 107 

come to me ! ' Wasn't it strange ? " It 
should be added that there was no expectation 
of Miss Ridd's sudden illness (angina pectoris) 
at the time it occurred, as she had not had an 
attack for some time (Proc. S.P.R., x. 290). 

It would be tiresome, even if space allowed, 
to quote the large number of similar cases, 
supported by first-hand evidence, which are 
published in the records of the S.P.R. The 
body of evidence is like a faggot — a single 
stick may be broken, but the whole bundle 
has a strength which resists fracture. Year 
by year this bundle is gaining in volume and 
solidity, and the most captious critic, though 
he may find a weak case here and there, 
cannot break down the accumulated evidence 
afforded by the whole. 

How telepathy is propagated We have not 
the remotest idea. Certainly it is not likely 
to be through any material medium or by any 
physical agency known to us. The existence 
of wireless telegraphy and the bridging of 
vast spaces by messages transmitted in this 
way naturally suggest that thought might 
likewise be transmitted by a similar system 
of ether waves, which some have called " brain 
waves." And there is no doubt the fact of 
wireless telegraphy has made telepathy more 
widely credible and popular. As remarked on 
a previous page, hostility to a new idea arises 
largely from its being unrelated to existing 
knowledge. As soon as we see, or think we 
see, some relation or resemblance to what we 



108 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

already know, hostility of mind changes to 
hospitality, and we have no further doubt 
of the truth of the new idea. It is not so 
much evidence that convinces men of some- 
thing entirely foreign to their habit of thought, 
as the discovery of a link between the new and 
the old. 

Let us, therefore, for a moment examine this 
analogy of telepathy to wireless telegraphy. 
Even if we assume the so-called " brain waves " 
to be infinitely minute waves in the ether that 
fills all space, they would still obey what is 
called " the law of inverse squares," that is 
to say, spreading on every side in ever expand- 
ing waves, they would decay in proportion 
to the square of the distance from their source. 
Thus, at a thousand yards away from the source, 
the effect produced on any receiver would be 
a million times less than the effect upon the 
same receiver a yard away from the originating 
source. Hence, to transmit waves over great 
distances through free space requires tre- 
mendous energy in the originating source of 
these waves, otherwise the waves would be so 
enfeebled when they reached the receiver that 
it could not detect them. Now we have no 
evidence to show that any tremendous mental 
effort is required on the part of the agent 
when experiments on thought transference — 
such as between Miss Miles and Miss Ramsden 
— are conducted at great distances apart. And 
what, on the brain- wave theory, must be the 
mental energy emanating from a dying person 
to transmit a mental impression from himself 



TELEPATHY 109 

to a friend on the other side of the globe ? for 
such cases are on record. 

There are several other reasons that could 
be urged against any physical mode of 
transmitting telepathy, thus the incidence 
of " brain waves," if such existed, would be 
felt by great numbers of people and not by 
one or two percipients, as is the case, and they 
would only create a faint, but exact, image of 
their source, which is not the case in tele- 
pathy. 

The fact is, in my opinion, the supernormal 
phenomena we are discussing in this little 
book do not belong to the material plane, 
and therefore the laws of the physical uni- 
verse are inapplicable to them. It is hope- 
less to attempt thus to explain telepathy and 
other phenomena which transcend knowledge 
derived from our sense perceptions, — though 
these latter are the foundation of physical 
science and the proper guide for our daily 
business here on earth. 

It is highly probable that the conscious 
waking self of those concerned takes no part 
in the actual telepathic transmission. The 
idea or object thought of in some way 
impresses the subliminal self of the agent, 
and this impression is transferred, doubtless 
instantaneously across space, to the inner 
subconscious self of the percipient. Here, 
however, a favourable moment may have to 
be awaited before the outer or conscious self 
can be stimulated into activity; for delay 
in the emergence of the impression is often 



110 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

noted. It is quite possible, therefore, that 
if we knew how to effect this transfer, unfail- 
ingly and accurately, from the outer to the 
inner self and vice versa, telepathy would 
become a universal and common method of 
communicating thought. This may be the 
case in the unseen world, when — 

fe As star to star vibrates light, may soul to soul 
Strike thro' a finer element of her own." 

In the next chapter we must examine the 
subject of apparitions, and shall find in many 
of these cases additional evidence of telepathy. 



CHAPTER IX 

VISUAL HALLUCINATIONS : PHANTASMS 
OF THE LIVING AND DEAD 

To most people the word " hallucination " 
means some delusion, or error of the mind, 
and nothing more. There are, of course, 
hallucinations of the insane and in delirium, 
where there is no objective reality whatever 
underlying the phantasm conjured up by the 
diseased mind. There are also hallucinations 
experienced by sane and healthy minds ; some 
person is seen, or something is felt, or words 
are heard, for which there is no material cause. 
The mind receives the hallucination as if it 
came through the channels of sense, and 
accordingly externalizes the impression, seek- 
ing its source in the world outside itself, 
whereas in all hallucinations the source is 
within the mind and is not derived from an 
impression received through the recognized 
organ of sense. 

Many hallucinations are due to some slight 
morbid affection of the brain, and their origin 
is a pathological study; but some hallucina- 
tions correspond with an appropriate real event 
occurring to another person; some accident, 
ill 



112 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

illness, emotion or death happening at that 
time to a distant friend. Such hallucinations 
are termed veridical or truth-telling; their 
study is a branch of psychology, and is an 
important part of psychical research. There 
may be no more substantiality about such 
visual hallucinations than there is about the 
reflection of oneself in a looking-glass. The 
image in the mirror is veridical and caused by 
a neighbouring objective reality; a "veridical 
hallucination," in like manner, is a mental 
image coinciding with some distant unseen real 
occurrence ; but the mental image is not derived 
through the organs of sense, as is the reflection 
seen in a mirror. It is in fact due to some 
impression made, otherwise than through the 
channels of sense, on the higher tracts of the 
brain, which then projects the impression 
into the outer world. In this it differs from 
an illusion where a slight external cause, per- 
ceived by the senses, may start an imaginary 
phantom. 

Now there is unquestionable evidence that 
visual hallucinations can be produced tele- 
pathically. Thus a friend, and member of the 
Council of the S.P.R., the late Rev. W. S. Moses 
— more widely known only as ' M. A. Oxon ' — 
one night desired to appear to a friend some 
miles distant, who was not informed before- 
hand of the intended experiment. At the 
very time his friend saw Mr. Moses appear 
before him, and as he gazed in astonishment, 
the figure faded away. A second time the 
experiment was repeated, with equal success. 



VISUAL HALLUCINATIONS 113 

A year or two later, Mr. S. H. Beard (well 
known to myself and others then on the 
Council of the S.P.R.) made a series of similar 
experiments, with equal success. The facts 
were investigated by Mr. Gurney, and fresh 
experiments made with success under his 
direction; full details of the evidence will be 
found in vol. i. of Phantasms of the Living. 
On one occasion, the phantom of Mr. Beard 
was seen and recognized by two persons in the 
room, simultaneously, who were unaware of 
the fact that Mr. Beard, some miles away, 
was then trying, by an effort of will, to appear 
to them. These results seemed at first almost 
incredible, but complete confirmation of them 
has been obtained from independent experi- 
ments made by others. In such cases the 
" agent " whose phantasm is seen is usually 
about to sleep, or is asleep, at the time of the 
apparition, although the wish to appear may 
have been formed earlier in the waking 
state. 

Unless we reject all testimony, or attribute 
the numerous cases investigated to some 
illusion, there can be no doubt that a distant 
person can, by his directed thought, or by 
dream, create a phantom of himself in the 
mind of a distant percipient. This suggests a 
general explanation of those visual hallucina- 
tions, or apparitions, at the moment of death, 
which are supported by abundant first-hand 
evidence. 

Now if a sane and healthy person sees a 
phantom of his friend B. at the moment when 



114 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

B., a hundred miles away, was unexpectedly 
dying, we should rightly conclude, if this 
case stood alone, that it was simply a chance 
coincidence. Many hallucinations occur, which 
do not coincide with any particular event, and 
one which does do so is more likely to be re- 
membered and talked of than the others. But 
what if investigation shows that there are hun- 
dreds of cases, well substantiated, where an 
apparition of B. is seen (or hallucination of some 
kind suggesting B. is perceived), and that this 
closely coincides with the time when the distant 
friend B. was dying, or suffering from a mental 
shock. When, moreover, before the hallucina- 
tion there was no knowledge of B.'s state, nor 
anything to suggest B. Now this is precisely 
what has been ascertained by the S.P.R. Over 
two hundred cases of apparitions at or about 
the time of death, resting upon first-hand and 
unimpeachable evidence, have been collected 
and published in the two large volumes en- 
titled Phantasms of the Living, the chief author 
of which was that brilliant and able man, 
Edmund Gurney. What conclusion can we 
draw from this except that some connection 
exists between the phantasm and the distant 
person who is dying ? And in many cases the 
simplest explanation of this connection is that 
afforded by telepathy, though other cases lead 
us to infer what Mr. Myers calls an excursive 
action of the spirit, which in some way renders 
its presence manifest to the percipient. 

In physical science we also meet with the 
problem of coincidences. Thus in the spectrum 



VISUAL HALLUCINATIONS 115 

of the sun it was noticed long ago that there 
were hundreds of transverse fine black lines 
running across the spectrum from the red end 
to the violet. These were for many years a 
mystery. Then it was discovered that in the 
spectrum of terrestrial metals there were 
numerous fine bright lines. It was found that 
the two bright yellow lines of sodium exactly 
coincided with two black lines in the yellow 
of the solar spectrum. That may have been 
a chance coincidence. But it was soon dis- 
covered that the hundreds of fine bright lines 
in the spectrum of iron vapour exactly co- 
incided in position with hundreds of fine black 
lines in the solar spectrum. This could not 
possibly be due to chance, as the " law of 
probability " demonstrates; so there must be 
some causal, not casual, connection between 
the two; this was confirmed when many 
other exact correspondences were discovered 
between terrestrial and solar spectra. These 
facts, coupled with the known reciprocity of 
radiation and absorption, established the 
existence of the vapour of numerous terrestrial 
elements in the atmosphere enveloping the sun 
and fixed stars. 

Science, by a study of coincidences, has 
annihilated space and definitely arrived at the 
knowledge of the composition of heavenly 
bodies, millions upon millions of miles distant 
from the earth. 

Can we do for psychical science what has 
been done for physical science ? Are the 
coincidences in time of hallucinations with 



116 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

some distant event suggested by them, — suf- 
ficiently numerous and exact to warrant a 
conclusion with a confidence such as the 
coincidences in space, in the lines of terrestrial 
and stellar spectra, has afforded to physical 
science ? 

The problem which Edmund Gurney first 
attempted to solve was to obtain a numerical 
comparison of veridical hallucinations with 
those which were purely accidental. When 
the relative frequency of these two classes is 
ascertained, the probability of mere chance 
coincidence being the cause of the former can 
be calculated. By a " census of hallucina- 
tions," begun in 1884, Edmund Gurney ob- 
tained from nearly six thousand adults replies 
to the question " whether during the preceding 
ten years they had experienced, when in good 
health and wide awake, a vivid impression of 
seeing or being touched by a human being, or 
hearing a voice which suggested a human 
presence, when no one was there." After his 
death, a similar but more elaborate census 
was undertaken (with the approval of the In- 
ternational Congress of Experimental Psycho- 
logy) by a committee of the S.P.R., over 
which Professor H. Sidgwick presided. This 
committee, in answer to a question similar 
to the above, except that no time limit was 
named, received written replies from seventeen 
thousand adults. 

Careful and critical investigation of the 
affirmative replies led both Edmund Gurney 
and the committee to conclude that pure 



VISUAL HALLUCINATIONS 117 

chance could not account for the number of 
cases which showed a close coincidence between 
the time of death and the apparition of a dying 
person recognized by the distant percipient. 
The committee found that, making amplest 
allowance for various sources of error, the 
proportion of veridical (i. e. coincidental cases) 
to the meaningless (i. e. non-coincidental cases) 
is 440 times greater than pure chance would 
give ; a result which they stated in the following 
cautious words : " Between deaths and appa- 
ritions of the dying person a connection exists 
which is not due to chance alone. This we 
hold as a proved fact. The discussion of its 
full implications cannot be attempted in this 
paper; — nor perhaps exhausted in this age." 
(Report in S.P.R. Proceedings, vol. x., p. 894; 
the reader should consult this volume, which 
is devoted to a critical discussion of this 
important census.) 

Such a result disposes once for all of the 
common explanation : " It was just an odd 
chance that the apparition happened to co- 
incide with the death of that particular per- 
son; " the hits being remembered, and the 
misses forgotten. In fact, before arriving at 
the calculation above given, the committee 
made an almost extravagant allowance for 
forgetfulness in the latter case, and exaggera- 
tion in the former. 

The statistical evidence is not, however, 
the argument that appeals most to the general 
public. Any person who has seen for himself 
an apparition, which he recognized as that of 



118 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

a distant friend, and who afterwards found the 
time of the appearance to have coincided with 
the unexpected death of his friend, would be 
far more impressed by that single fact than 
by any statistics. This is also true of those 
who merely hear of such a case from intimate 
friends. It is much to be desired that every 
percipient of any hallucination should, before 
he knows whether it has any significance, make 
and show to some other person a written' 
memorandum; thus precluding the objection 
often raised by sceptics, that there is no docu- 
mentary evidence of his previous ignorance 
of the crisis through which his friend was 
passing when he experienced the hallucination. 
Unfortunately, people do not as a rule write 
down these experiences and send them to 
friends; but as communications of the kind 
are now taken more seriously, we may hope 
that this will become more common. Even 
as it is, there are not wanting cases authenti- 
cated by evidence of this very kind. The 
committee, for instance, gives seventeen evi- 
dential cases which were noted at the time by 
the percipient. 

In the following case a note of the apparition 
seen shortly before death was made at the 
time, and preserved by the percipient, when 
she had no knowledge of the brief, fatal illness 
of the deceased. The percipient, Miss Hervey, 
then staying in Tasmania with Lady H., had 
just come in from a ride in excellent health 
and spirits, and was leaving her room up-stairs 
to have tea with Lady H., when she saw 



VISUAL HALLUCINATIONS 119 

coming up the stairs the figure of her cousin, 
a nurse in Dublin, to whom she was much 
attached. She at once recognized the figure, 
which was dressed in grey, and without waiting 
to see it disappear, she hurried to Lady H., 
whom she told what she had seen. Lady H. 
laughed at her, but told her to note it down 
in her diary, which she did. Diary and note 
were seen by the critical Mr. Podmore, who 
investigated the case on behalf of the S.P.R. 
The note ran as follows : " Saturday, April 
21, 1888, 6 p.m. Vision of (giving her 
cousin's nickname) on landing in grey dress." 
In June news of this cousin's unexpected death 
reached Miss Hervey in Tasmania. She died 
in a Dublin hospital from typhus fever on 
April 22, 1888. A letter, written the same 
day, giving an account of Miss Ethel B.'s 
death, was sent to Miss Hervey, preserved 
by her, and seen by Mr. Podmore. It states 
that the crisis of the illness began at 4 a.m. on 
the 22nd, but that Miss B. lingered on for 
twelve hours, dying at 4.30 p.m. As the 
difference of time between Tasmania and 
Dublin is about ten hours, the apparition 
preceded the actual death by some thirty-two 
hours. The kind of dress worn by the nurses 
in the hospital was unknown to Miss Hervey, 
and was found to be of a greyish tone when 
seen from a little distance. The phantom 
made so vivid an impression on Miss Hervey 
that, on the evening she saw it, she wrote a 
long letter to her cousin in Dublin telling her 
about it. This letter arrived some six weeks 



120 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

after her death, and was returned to the 
writer. (Proc. S.P.R., vol. x., p. 282.) 

The next case is of high evidential value, 
the impression, which was unique in the per- 
cipient's experience, having been at once com- 
municated to a third person, whose testimony 
to that point we have obtained; the coin- 
cidence in time was certainly close to within 
a very few minutes, and perhaps exact. Mr. 
S., the percipient, who was personally known 
to Mr. Gurney, and occupied a position of 
considerable responsibility, did not wish his 
name to be published, but permitted it to be 
given to inquirers, and offered to answer any 
questions personally. (See Phantasms of the 
Living, vol. L, p. 210.) 

Mr. S. and Mr. F. L. had been colleagues in 
an office and intimate friends for about eight 
years, entertaining for one another a very 
great regard and esteem. On Monday, March 
19, 1883, Mr. F. L., on coming to the office, 
complained of having suffered from indigestion. 
On Saturday he was absent, and, as Mr. S. 
afterwards learned, was seen by a medical man, 
who thought he wanted a day or two of rest, 
but expressed no opinion that anything was 
seriously amiss. 

On Saturday evening, March 24, Mr. S., 
who had a headache, was at home, sitting on 
a couch at the shaded side of the room lit by 
a gas chandelier, under which, in the middle 
of the room, his wife sat reading. Having 
remarked to her that for the first time for 
months he felt rather too warm, he leaned 



VISUAL HALLUCINATIONS 121 

back on the couch, and the next minute saw 
Mr. F. L. standing before him, dressed as 
usual. Mr. S. noticed that he was wearing 
his black-banded hat, his overcoat un- 
buttoned, and carried a stick. He looked 
fixedly at Mr. S., and then passed away. At 
the moment Mr. S. felt an icy chill, and his 
hair bristled. He quoted to himself from 
Job : " And lo, a spirit passed before me, and 
the hair of my flesh stood up." 

Turning then to his wife, who had been 
looking in another direction, and had seen 
nothing, he asked her the time. She said, 
" Twelve minutes to nine." He said, " I asked 
because F. L. is dead. I have just seen him." 
She tried to persuade him that it was fancy ; but 
he persisted that he had seen Mr. F. L., and 
was sure of his death. She noticed that he 
looked much agitated and very pale. He was 
afterwards struck by his own instant certainty, 
with nothing to suggest the idea, of his friend's 
death, and by his acceptance of the incident as 
a matter of course, without feeling surprise. 

On Sunday afternoon, about three o'clock, 
Mr. F. L.'s brother, A., called with the news at 
Mr. S.'s house. It had occurred to him on the 
way that Mr. S. would probably have a presenti- 
ment of F. L.'s death owing to the strong 
sympathy between them. Seeing that this 
was the case, when Mr. S. met him at the door, 
he said : " I suppose you know what I have 
come to tell you ? " Mr. S. replied : " Yes, 
your brother is dead," and told of his vision. 
on the previous evening. 



122 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

Mr. A. L. on Sunday about 8 p.m. had visited 
his brother F., whom he found sitting up in his 
room. Leaving him about 8.40, apparently 
much better, Mr. A. L. went down to the dining- 
room, where he stayed with his sister for about 
half-an-hour, and then left, upon which his 
sister immediately went up-stairs, and found 
her brother F. lying dead on his bed from 
rupture of the aorta. His death must there- 
fore have occurred either a few minutes before 
or after 9 p.m. 

There had never been any thought-trans- 
ference between him and Mr. S., who had never 
seen an apparition before, nor believed in 
them. Mr. A. L. describes himself as "no 
believer in visions." Mr. Gurney calculates 
the odds against such an event being due to 
mere chance coincidence as 208,000,000 to 1. 

Sometimes the phantom is not only seen 
but heard, and may be regarded as an auditory 
as well as visual hallucination. The following 
striking case, though remote in point of time, 
is so well attested as to be worth quoting. It 
is from Mrs. Richardson of Combe Down, 
Bath, who gave Mr. Gurney a viva voce account 
precisely as here recorded. (See Phantasms 
of the Living, vol. i., p. 443.) Mrs. Richardson 
described herself as a matter-of-fact person, 
and not given to frequent or vivid dreams. 

" August 26, 1882. 

66 On September 9, 1848, at the siege of 
Mooltan, my husband, Major- General Richard- 



VISUAL HALLUCINATIONS 123 

son, C.B., then adjutant of his regiment, was 
most severely and dangerously wounded, and 
supposing himself dying, asked one of the 
officers with him to take the ring off his finger 
and send it to his wife, who, at that time, was 
fully 150 miles distant, at Ferozepore. On 
the night of September 9, 1848, I was lying 
on my bed, between sleeping and waking, 
when I distinctly saw my husband being 
carried off the field, seriously wounded, and 
heard his voice saying, ' Take this ring off 
my finger, and send it to my wife.' All the 
next day I could not get the sight or the voice 
out of my mind. In due time I heard of 
General Richardson having been severely 
wounded in the assault on Mooltan. He sur- 
vived, however, and is still living. It was not 
for some time after the siege that I heard from 
Colonel L., the officer who helped to carry 
General Richardson off the field, that the 
request as to the ring was actually made to 
him, just as I had heard it at Ferozepore at that 
very time, 

"M. A. Richardson." 

General Richardson, in answer to Mr. Gur* 
ney's inquiries, stated that he distinctly re- 
membered the incident. He was wounded 
in the evening of September 9, and taking the 
ring off his finger, said to the late Major Lloyd, 
who was supporting him : " Send this to my 
wife," or words to that effect. He had not 
promised before leaving home to send her the 
ring, nor had he expressed any presentiment 



124 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

of being hurt. As Mr. Myers remarks, " The 
detail about the ring seems fairly to raise the 
case out of the category of mere visions of 
absent persons who are known to be in danger, 
and with whom the percipient's thoughts have 
been anxiously engaged." 

In the following case the percipient appeared 
to be transported to the actual scene of the 
event, and observed some minute details 
(afterwards verified) of inanimate objects 
around, somewhat as in a crystal vision. 
Such cases suggest the phenomena of clair- 
voyance, when the percipient's powers of 
vision extend far beyond the range of their 
organs of sight, the information so obtained 
being independent of the thought passing in 
the minds of others. Here, however, it seems 
possible that the phenomena may have been 
due to an " excursive action " on the part of 
the decedent's spirit. 

"On October 24, 1889, Edmund Dunn, 
brother of Mrs. Agnes Paquet, was serving as 
fireman on the tug Wolf, a small steamer 
engaged in towing vessels in Chicago Harbour. , 
At about 3 o'clock a.m. the tug fastened to a 
vessel, inside the piers, to tow her up the river. 
While adjusting the tow-line, Mr. Dunn fell 
or was thrown overboard by the tow-line, and 
drowned." 

Mrs. Paquet's Statement 

" I arose about the usual hour on the morning 
of the accident, probably about six o'clock. 



VISUAL HALLUCINATIONS 125 

I had slept well throughout the night, had 
no dreams or sudden awakenings. I awoke 
feeling gloomy and depressed, which feeling 
I could not shake off. After breakfast my 
husband went to his work, and, at the proper 
time, the children were gotten ready and sent 
to school, leaving me alone in the house. Soon 
after this I decided to steep and drink some 
tea, hoping it would relieve me of the gloomy 
feelings afore-mentioned. I went into the 
pantry, took down the tea-canister, and as I 
turned around my brother Edmund — or his 
exact image — stood before me and only a few 
feet away. The apparition stood with back 
towards me, or, rather, partially so, and was in 
the act of falling forward — away from me — 
seemingly impelled by two ropes or a loop of 
rope drawing against his legs. The vision 
lasted but a moment, disappearing over a 
low railing or bulwark, but was very distinct. 
I dropped the tea, clasped my hands to 
my face and exclaimed, ' My God ! Ed. is 
drowned ! ' 

" At about 10.30 a.m. my husband received 
a telegram from Chica go, announcing the drown- 
ing of my brother. When he arrived home he 
said to me, ' Ed. is sick in hospital at Chicago ; 
I have just received a telegram,' to which I 
replied, ' Ed. is drowned ; I saw him go over- 
board.' I then gave him a minute description 
of what I had seen. I stated that my brother, 
as I saw him, was bareheaded, had on a heavy 
blue sailor's shirt, no coat, and that he went 
over the rail or bulwark. I noticed that his 



126 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

pants' legs were rolled up enough to show the 
white lining inside. I also described the ap- 
pearance of the boat at the point where my 
brother went overboard. 

" I am not nervous, and neither before nor 
since have I had any experience in the least 
degree similar to that above related. 

" My brother was not subject to fainting or 
vertigo. 

" Agnes Paquet." 

Mr. Paquet corroborates his wife's state- 
ment on all points. He went at once to 
Chicago, where he found that the appearance 
of the vessel, which his wife had never seen, 
was exactly as she had described it ; while the 
crew confirmed her accounts of her brother's 
dress, " except that they thought he had had 
his hat on at the time of the accident. They 
said that he had purchased a pair of pants a 
few days before, and as they were a trifle long, 
wrinkling at the knees, had worn them rolled 
up, showing the white lining, as seen by my 
wife." 

Upon this case (see Proc. 8.P.R., vol. vii., 
p. 34) Mrs. Sidgwick remarks — 

" Here Mrs. Paquet not only had a vivid 
impression of her brother within a few hours 
of his death — not only knew that he was dead 
— but saw a more or less accurate representa- 
tion of the scene of his death. 

" It will have been noticed that her impres- 
sion was not contemporaneous with the event 
to which it related, but occurred some six hours 



VISUAL HALLUCINATIONS 127 

afterwards. It was preceded by a feeling of 
depression with which she had awoken in the 
morning, and one is at first tempted to suppose 
that she had dreamed of the event and for- 
gotten it, and that her subsequent vision was 
the result of a sudden revivification of the dream 
in her memory. But we do not know enough 
to justify us in assuming this, and against such 
a hypothesis may be urged the experience of 
Mrs. Storie, related in Phantasms of the Living 
(vol i., p. 370), which somewhat resembles 
Mrs. Paquet's. Mrs. Storie tells us that all 
the evening she felt unusually nervous, and 
then, when she went to bed, she had a remark- 
able dream, in which she saw a series of scenes 
which afterwards turned out to have a clear 
relation to the death of her brother, who had 
been killed by a passing train four hours earlier. 
In her case the nervousness cannot be regarded 
as telepathic, as it is stated to have begun 
before the accident, but it seems quite possible 
that the nervousness and depression may have 
had to do with some condition in the percipient 
which rendered the vision possible." 

A curious case, also involving the produc- 
tion of a kind of picture, which, having been 
seen by several people simultaneously, comes 
under the head of a " collective hallucination," 
is related by Mr. C. A. W. Lett (Phantasms of 
the Living, vol. ii., p. 213) : — 

" On the 5th April, 1873, my wife's father, 
Captain Towns, died at his residence, Cran- 
brook, Rose Bay, near Sydney, N.S. Wales. 



128 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

About six weeks after his death my wife had 
occasion, one evening about nine o'clock, to 
go to one of the bedrooms in the [above] house. 
She was accompanied by a young lady, Miss 
Berthon, and as they entered the room — the 
gas was burning all the time — they were 
amazed to see, reflected as it were on the 
polished surface of the wardrobe, the image of 
Captain Towns. It was barely half -figure, 
the head, shoulders, and part of the arms only 
showing — in fact, it was like an ordinary 
medallion portrait, but life-size. The face 
appeared wan and pale, as it did before his 
death, and he wore a kind of grey flannel 
jacket, in which he had been accustomed to 
sleep. Surprised and half alarmed at what 
they saw, their first idea was that a portrait 
had been hung in the room, and that what 
they saw was its reflection; but there was no 
picture of the kind. . . . 

" C. A. W. Lett." 

The phantom portrait was immediately 
afterwards seen and recognized by Captain 
Towns' unmarried daughter, by his old body- 
servant, by the butler, by the nurse, by a 
housemaid, and finally by his widow, who 
passed her hand over the panel of the ward- 
robe, whereupon the figure gradually faded 
away, and never reappeared. The recognition 
of the appearance on the part of each was 
independent, and not due to any suggestion 
from the others. The case is attested by Mrs. 
Lett and Miss Towns, and much resembles 



VISUAL HALLUCINATIONS 129 

the vivid and sometimes collective hallucina- 
tion seen in crystal- vision (p. 141). 

In the foregoing cases, no purpose on the 
part of the agent can be inferred, beyond that 
of self-manifestation or announcement of 
death. There are, however, a considerable 
group of cases where the apparition communi- 
cates some definite information, hitherto un- 
known to the percipient. Only a brief mes- 
sage seems possible, and it is one probably 
felt by the deceased person to be of urgent 
importance. The evidence upon which such 
cases rest of course needs to be sifted with the 
utmost care, and this has been done in the 
following well-attested instance, of which we 
can only give a bare outline; the case is 
corroborated by different witnesses, and is 
fully reported and discussed in the S.P.R. 
Proceedings, vol. viii., p. 200 et seq. 

In February 1891, Michael Conley, a farmer 
living in Iowa, U.S.A., died suddenly at 
Dubuque, about 100 miles from his home. 
After the inquest at Dubuque the old clothes 
which he had been wearing were thrown away, 
and his son brought home the body. On 
hearing of her father's death, his daughter 
Lizzie fell into a swoon, in which she remained 
for several hours. When she recovered con- 
sciousness she said : " Where are father's old 
clothes ? He has just appeared to me dressed 
in a white shirt, black clothes, and satin slip- 
pers, and told me that after leaving home he 
sewed a large roll of bills inside his grey shirt 
with a piece of my red dress, and the money 



ISO PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

is still there." This description of her father's 
burial clothes, which she had not seen, was 
quite correct; but neither she, nor anybody 
else, had known anything of the pocket and 
money in the shirt. To pacify her, her 
brother went back the 100 miles to Dubuque, 
where he found the old clothes were lying in 
a shed. In the shirt was found a large roll of 
bills, amounting to thirty-five dollars, sewed 
with a piece of red cloth, exactly like Lizzie's 
dress, the stitches being large and irregular, as 
if made by a man. Telepathy from living 
minds might account for her accurate know- 
ledge about the unseen burial garments, but 
not for her statement about the secreted 
money, of which all the family were ignorant. 
It is a curious fact that children are not 
infrequently impressed with some veridical 
hallucination. In the following case a little 
girl seems to have been utilized as an auto- 
matic machine, so to speak, and caused to 
utter words which for her can hardly have 
had any meaning : — 

"King's Ferry, New York. 

" On the afternoon of January 2nd, 1867, 
my little daughter, Augusta, aged three years, 
was playing with her dolly, sitting near her 
aunt, who was spending the day at my house 
in New York. Her little cousins, Darius and 
David Adams, aged eleven and nine years, 
to the younger of whom she was tenderly 
attached, were living in Penn Yan, New York, 



VISUAL HALLUCINATIONS 131 

25 miles away. The cousins had not met 
since the preceding summer or early autumn. 

" While busy with her play, the child sud- 
denly spoke, and said, 4 Auntie, Davie is 
drowned.' Her father, who was present, and 
I, heard her distinctly. I answered, ' Gussie, 
what did you say ? ' She repeated the words, 
1 Davie is drowned.' Her aunt, who was not 
familiar with the childish accent, said, ' Gussie, 
I do not understand you ' ; when the child 
repeated for the third time, ' Auntie, Davie is 
drowned.' I chanced to look at the clock, and 
saw it was just four. I immediately turned 
the conversation, as I did not wish such a 
painful thought fastened on the child's 
mind. 

" I cannot recall that any allusion had been 
made to the boys that day; neither was I 
aware that my daughter even knew the mean- 
ing of the word drowned. She simply uttered 
the words without apparent knowledge of their 
import. 

44 That evening a telegram came from my 
brother, saying, 4 My little boys, Darius and 
Davie, were drowned at four o'clock to-day 
while skating on Kenks Lake. 5 

44 E. M. Ogden." 

The foregoing statement is corroborated 
by Mr. Curtis, brother-in-law to Mrs. Ogden. 
This case is interesting because a very young 
child is not likely to have nervous apprehen- 
sions or forebodings of disaster concerning 
young playmates, of whose whereabouts and 



132 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

occupation at the time she had not the 
remotest notion. {Journal S.P.R., vol. i., 
p. 435.) 

If we could discover some underlying reason 
for these sporadic occurrences few would doubt 
the evidence. But nearly all the cases seem 
so meaningless and often trivial that we are 
disposed to reject the evidence on that account. 
This, however, is an unscientific and irrational 
attitude, and if adopted would be fatal to all 
scientific inquiry : how trivial and meaningless 
once seemed the attraction of light bodies to 
rubbed amber, and yet the science and very 
name of electricity arose therefrom. Here, 
as elsewhere, we must exercise patience and 
scrupulous care in collecting all available 
evidence, and leave the solution to the 
future. 



CHAPTER X 

DREAMS AND CRYSTAL-VISIONS 

From the earliest times, the mystery 
attaching to the world of dream has been a 
fruitful subject of speculation. The swift 
and dramatic portrayal of scenes, the recovery 
of lapsed memories, the occasional glimpses 
of things beyond the range of vision during 
sleep ; the illusions " hypnagogiques," or vivid 
images which sometimes arise between sleep 
and waking, all these and other points have 
often been discussed. Only a brief account 
can first be given of a few cases wherein the 
discovery of lost articles has been effected by 
a dream. In the consideration of such cases, 
we must, however, bear in mind not only the 
possibility of the emergence of a lapsed 
memory during sleep, but also that the 
dreamer may have unconsciously perceived 
the lost article and in sleep this fact may 
have floated into consciousness. There are, 
however, cases where the evidence appears to 
go beyond the border line between normal 
and supernormal percipience. During hyp- 
notic trance — which may be regarded as a 
deeper form of sleep — there sometimes also 
133 



134 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

occurs clairvoyance, or telcesthesia, " percep- 
tion at a distance." 

The following case, sent by Mrs. Bickford- 
Smith immediately after its occurrence, may 
be taken as an illustration of the revival of 
memory during sleep — 

" On reaching Mor ley's Hotel at 5 o'clock on 
Tuesday, 29th January, 1889, I missed a gold 
brooch, which I supposed I had left in a fitting- 
room at Swan & Edgar's. I sent there at 
once, but was very disappointed to hear that 
after a diligent search they could not find the 
brooch. I was very vexed, and worried about 
the brooch, and that night dreamed that I 
should find it shut up in a number of the 
Queen newspaper that had been on the table, 
and in my dream I saw the very page where 
it would be, and noticed one of the plates on 
that page. Directly after breakfast I went 
to Swan & Edgar's and asked to see the 
papers, at the same time telling the young 
ladies about the dream, and where I had seen 
the brooch. The papers had been moved from 
that room, but were found, and to the astonish- 
ment of the young ladies, I said, ' This is 
the one that contains my brooch ; ' and there 
at the very page I expected I found it. 

" A. M. Bickfokd-Smith." 

We received a substantially similar account 
from Mrs. Bickford-Smith's brother-in-law, 
Mr. H. A. Smith, the Hon. Treasurer of the 
S.P.R., who was a witness of the trouble taken 
to find the brooch. 



DREAMS AND CRYSTAL- VISIONS 135 

A somewhat similar experience was com- 
municated to us by Mrs. Crellin, known to Mr. 
Gurney — 

" When a school-girl I one day foolishly 
removed from my French teacher's hand a 
ring, which I, in fun, transferred to my own. 
On removing it from my finger just before 
going to bed, I found that a stone had fallen 
out of the ring, and I was much troubled 
about it, especially as the ring had been given 
to my teacher. We had four class-rooms, and 
as I had been moving from one to another 
in the course of the evening, I could not hope 
to find the lost stone. However, in my 
dreams that night I saw the stone lying on a 
certain plank on the floor of our ' drilling- 
room,' and on awaking I dressed hastily and 
went direct to the spot marked in my dream, 
and recovered the lost stone. This narrative 
has nothing thrilling in it, but its simplicity 
and exactness may commend it to your 
notice." 

Mr. Gurney adds : "In conversation with 
me, Mrs. Crellin described the four class-rooms 
as good-sized rooms, which it would have taken 
a long time to search over. She is positive 
that she went quite straight to the spot. She 
is an excellent witness." 

Another similar dream was contributed by 
Mrs, Stuart, of Foley House, Rothesay, N.B., 
a lady well known to Mr. Myers. Here a 
friend lost, out of doors, an opal stone from 
his ring which he valued as it belonged to his 
father. All set to work to search for it on the 



136 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

lawn and under the surrounding trees, but 
without success. The following night Mrs. 
Stuart dreamt she saw the lost opal, glistening 
with dew, lying by a leaf beneath a certain 
tree which she recognized as at the edge of the 
lawn. She was so much impressed with the 
vividness of the dream, that in the early 
morning she dressed and went out straight to 
the tree she had seen in her dream ; there, sure 
enough, she found the stone exactly in the 
position she had seen it in her dream. 

A corresponding case, which has the advan- 
tage of having been written down at the time by 
the witness and corroborated by the dreamer, 
is given by Miss Hunt, of Yeovil, who states 
that at 6 p.m., having paid her gardener his 
wages wrapped in a piece of paper, she gave 
him some letters to post on his way home. An 
hour later the gardener returned saying he 
had lost the paper containing his wages. He 
was told to retrace his steps and make a 
careful search ; this he did, but to no avail. 
During the night he dreamt that upon crossing 
the road his foot struck a mud heap, and there 
was the lost paper containing his wages. He 
told his wife the dream, and falling asleep again 
dreamt the same dream. He got up early, 
went to the spot he had seen in his dream, 
and there found his wages and all exactly 
as he had dreamt. The gardener, who is 
described as a most intelligent, truthful man, 
corroborates the facts. Here, again, is another 
useful dream which, like the last, appears to 
lie on the border line between lapsed memory 



DREAMS AND CRYSTAL- VISIONS 137 

and some supernormal percipience during 
sleep. 

From Mr. Herbert J. Lewis, 19, Park Place, 
Cardiff— 

" In September 1880, I lost the landing 
order of a large steamer containing a cargo 
of iron ore, which had arrived in the port of 
Cardiff. She had to commence discharging 
at six o'clock the next morning. I received 
the landing order at four o'clock in the after- 
noon, and when I arrived at the office at six 
I found that I had lost it. During all the 
evening I was doing my utmost to find the 
officials at the Custom House to get a permit, 
as the loss was of the greatest importance, 
preventing the ship from discharging. I 
came home in a great degree of trouble about 
the matter, as I feared that I should lose my 
situation in consequence. 

" That night I dreamed that I saw the lost 
landing order lying in a crack in the wall 
under a desk in the Long Room of the Custom 
House. At five the next morning I went 
down to the Custom House and got the 
keeper to get up and open it. I went to the 
spot of which I had dreamed, and found 
the paper in the very place. The ship was not 
ready to discharge at her proper time, and I 
went on board at seven and delivered the 
landing order, saving her from all delay. 
" Herbert J. Lewis." 

The truth of the foregoing is certified by 



138 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

two witnesses, and further inquiry on the spot 
also corroborated Mr. Lewis' statement. 

It is, of course, possible that in all these 
cases the lost object might originally have 
come within the range of vision of the owner 
but only subconsciously noted; in sleep the 
faint impression may have emerged in a dream 
sufficiently vivid to be remembered upon 
awaking. There are, however, other cases 
wherein this explanation does not apply, 
showing that a higher perceptive faculty 
than ordinary vision appears sometimes to 
emerge in dream. 

Several cases of this kind are cited in detail 
by Mr. Myers in Human Personality, vol. i., 
chap, iv., and in the appendix to that chapter. 
The narrow limits of our space will only 
allow a very brief reference to some of these 
cases. 

A well-known instance is that of Canon 
Warburton, who states that when waiting 
up one night for his brother, who had gone 
to a dance, he fell asleep and dreamt he saw 
his brother " coming out of a drawing-room 
with a brightly illuminated landing, catching 
his foot in the edge of the top stair and falling 
headlong, just saving himself by his elbows 
and hands." 

Soon after his brother returned and ex- 
claimed — 

" I have just had a narrow escape of break- 
ing my neck. Coming out of the ball-room, 
I caught my foot and tumbled full length 
down the stairs." 



DREAMS AND CRYSTAL-VISIONS 139 

Canon Warburton states he had never seen 
the house where the accident occurred, but 
the vivid impression he had of the details 
of the scene was corroborated by questions 
he put to his brother. 

A case singularly like the foregoing occurred 
with the late Bishop of Iowa (Dr. Lee) and his 
son, between whom there was a tender and 
sympathetic affection. One night the son — 
living in a city three hundred miles distant 
from where his father was in Iowa — had a 
vivid dream of his father falling down -stairs ; 
he jumped to catch the Bishop and awoke 
both himself and his wife, to whom he related 
his dream : looking at the time he found it to 
be 2.15. Unable to sleep further, he rose early 
and telegraphed to his father to know if all 
was well. The letter in reply informed him 
that on the night and almost to the minute 
of his dream, the Bishop had fallen down a 
flight of stairs and was very seriously injured. 
An independent confirmation of the incident 
was sent to Dr. Hodgson by the Bishop of 
Algowa. (Proc. S.P.R., vol. vii., p. 38.) 

Another instance, which had the advantage 
of being noted in a diary before the verification 
of the dream was known, is given by Mr. 
(now Sir Edward) Hamilton, who states : 
" On March 20th, 1888, I woke up with the 
impression of a very vivid dream. I had 
dreamt that my brother, who had long been 
in Australia and of whom I had heard nothing 
for several months, had come home, and that 
something had gone wrong with one of his 



140 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

arms — it looked horribly red near the wrist, 
his hand being bent back." The dream 
vision recurred so persistently on getting up 
that, notwithstanding his prejudice against 
attaching any importance to dreams, he noted 
it down that day in his diary, the only time 
he had ever done such a thing; this entry 
Mr. Gurney saw. A week later a letter was 
received from the brother saying he was on 
his way home, and that he was suffering from 
a bad arm. On his arrival in London on 
March 29th, it turned out that his arm was 
suffering from blood-poisoning and that he had 
a bad abscess over the wrist-joint. On inquiry 
it was found that the letter received by Sir 
Edward Hamilton was written by his brother 
and posted at Naples on the morning of the 
dream in London. 

These cases and several others we might 
cite may be attributed to telepathy, of the 
conditions and range of which we know so 
little. In fact, " telepathic clairvoyance " is 
considered by some investigators an adequate 
explanation of nearly all the phenomena 
which appear to indicate supernormal per- 
cipience, or " independent clairvoyance." 
Certainly it may account for much of the 
mystery of the visions seen in " crystal- 
gazing," which we must now consider. But 
it cannot, in my opinion, account for all the 
phenomena described in the next chapter, 
nor for the success of the " dowser " described 
in Chapter XII. Here, however, we must 
take into account the possibility of mis- 



DREAMS AND CRYSTAL- VISIONS 141 

description and of chance-coincidence, of this 
the reader must judge for himself. 

Crystal-gazing 

We now come to a class of phenomena 
resembling day-dreams ; vivid images of 
scenes and persons induced by abstracting 
the mind from the normal sensory impressions, 
through intently gazing upon some lucent 
object, such as a glass sphere or polished 
crystal. Hallucinations are thus evoked 
resembling those in dream pictures or in 
hypnotic trance. The percipient, or " server," 
is no doubt in a state of incipient hypnosis; 
detached from the surrounding impressions 
of the external world and awake to the 
impressions arising from his hidden or sub- 
liminal self. The crystal is a form of autoscope, 
not mechanical, like the pendule or dowsing- 
rod, but sensory. As with other autoscopes, 
the subconscious contents of the percipient's 
mind come into play. Forgotten memories of 
events or scenes are sometimes revived; a 
latent mental impression is developed into 
consciousness; very like the emergence of a 
picture on some photographic plate exposed 
years ago, then put aside and forgotten, until 
accidentally developed to-day. Yet mingled 
with these latent memories there sometimes 
come scenes of distant events then occurring, 
and afterwards verified, which the seer could 
not have known through any normal means. 
Thus the crystal-gazer, if evidence be worth 



142 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

anything, is not infrequently clairvoyant 
without being entranced. 

" In one point nearly all observers concur. 
These visions imply a visualizing power, 
greater than the seer can exercise by voluntary 
effort. The distinctness, artistic quality and 
illumination of these crystal pictures of the 
figures, often cause great surprise." This 
observation by Mr. Myers is very true. In 
fact, the vision is described with the vividness 
and sense of reality of an eye-witness of the 
actual scene, and resembles similar descriptions 
given by the clairvoyant in the hypnotic 
trance ; as if the soul in both cases temporarily 
transcended its corporeal limitations. 

Historically, crystal-gazing is one of the 
most ancient and interesting means of in- 
ducing hallucinations for the purpose of 
seeking information that could not be gained 
by the observer through any normal means. 
After all there was something to be said for 
the oracles in ancient Greece and Rome, where 
various forms of crystal-gazing were employed, 
known as crystallomancy or hydromancy, 
according as the seer gazed at polished 
crystals or a mirror, or at a still pool of 
water. 

In India we find similar methods have been 
employed from a remote period, and also in 
Arabia, where visions are seen in a mirror by 
certain men. Mr. A. Lang tells us that an 
Arabian writer of the thirteenth century, one 
Ibn Khaldoun, gives practically the same 
account of how visions appear in the crystal 



DREAMS AND CRYSTAL- VISIONS 143 

as is given to-day. Certain men, Khaldoun 
says, " look into mirrors, or vessels filled with 
water . . . intently, until they perceive what 
they announce. The object gazed at dis- 
appears, and a sort of curtain, like a fog, 
interposes between the observer and the 
mirror. Upon this the things they wish to 
perceive are depicted and they recount what 
they see. When in this state the diviner sees 
things not with his ordinary eyesight, but 
with his soul. A new mode of perception 
has taken place. And yet the perceptions 
of the soul are so like those given by the senses 
as to deceive the observer, a fact which is 
well known." 

One can hardly believe this was written seven 
centuries ago, so admirably does it describe 
the facts and probably the true explanation 
of crystal vision, a transcendental, or spiritual 
perception rather than the normal sense 
perception. 

No wonder that in the Middle Ages the 
Christian Church regarded the whole thing as 
very uncanny and the work of evil spirits, and 
those who had the gift of " scrying " — the 
specularii they were termed — were looked on 
as heretics and treated accordingly. They 
survived, however, till the sixteenth century, 
when the famous Dr. Dee (1527-1608) gave 
a new impetus to crystal-gazing : no doubt 
the seer he employed had some clairvoyant 
faculty ; the " shew-stone " Dr. Dee used is 
still preserved in the British Museum. Aubrey 
in his Miscellanies (1696), p. 165, tells us of 



144 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

" Visions in a Beryl or crystal," and remarks 
that learned divines connect the " Urim and 
Thummim " with crystal-vision. In modern 
times Dean Plumptre in Smith's Dictionary of 
the Bible takes a not unlike view; the High 
Priest by gazing at the bright point in the 
Urim passed into a state of abstraction and 
saw visions. The antiquity and universality 
of some form of crystal-gazing is, as we have 
said, unquestionable. We find it in ancient 
as well as in modern Egypt, in Assyria, Persia 
and India, in Siberia, China and Japan, among 
the North American Indians, the Maoris of 
New Zealand, and various African tribes. It 
was practised by the Incas of Peru, and is still 
used among the natives of Australia, Polynesia 
and Madagascar. The practice was largely in 
use both in England and on the Continent in 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and 
its exponents were neither fools nor charlatans, 
but often learned men of note. 

Now let us turn to some of the modern 
evidence on behalf of crystal-gazing. Students 
will find ample details in the Proceedings of 
the S.P.R., vols. v. and viii., or in Mr. A. 
Lang's The Making of Religion, from which 
we will quote the following. Mr. Lang has a 
friend, Miss Angus, who is a remarkable 
" server." Miss Angus states — 

" A lady one day asked me to ' scry ' out 
a friend of whom she would think. Almost 
immediately I exclaimed, ' Here is an old, old 
lady looking at me with a triumphant smile 
on her face. She has a prominent nose and 



DREAMS AND CRYSTAL- VISIONS 145 

nut-cracker chin. Her face is very much 
wrinkled, especially at the sides of her eyes, 
as if she were always smiling. She is wearing 
a little white shawl with a black edge. But . . . 
she can't be old, as her hair is quite brown, 
although her face looks so very, very old.' 
The picture then vanished, and the lady said 
that I had accurately described her friend's 
mother instead of himself; that it was a 
family joke that the mother must dye her 
hair, it was so brown, and she was eighty-two 
years old. The lady asked me if the vision 
were distinct enough for me to recognize a 
likeness in the son's photograph ; next day 
she laid several photographs before me, and 
in a moment, without the slightest hesitation, 
I picked him out from his wonderful likeness 
to my vision." The facts were verbally 
communicated to and corroborated by Mr. A. 
Lang within a week of the occurrence. 

Another case, also vouched for by Mr. A. 
Lang, is interesting as it appears to be a 
telepathic transfer of the vision, seen by Miss 
Angus, to a friend, Miss Rose — 

44 At a recent experience of gazing, for the 
first time I was able to make another see what 
I saw in the crystal ball. Miss Rose called one 
afternoon, and begged me to look in the ball 
for her. I did so, and immediately exclaimed, 
' Oh, here is a bed, with a man in it looking 
very ill [I saw he was dead, but refrained from 
saying so], and there is a lady dressed in black 
sitting beside the bed.' I did not recognize 
the man to be any one I knew, so I told her to 



146 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

look. In a very short time she called out, 
' Oh, I see the bed too. But, oh, take it away, 
the man is dead.' She got quite a shock, and 
said she would never look in it again. Soon, 
however, curiosity prompted her to have one 
more look, and the scene at once came back 
again, and slowly, from a misty object at the 
side of the bed, the lady in black became quite 
distinct. Then she described several people 
in the room, and said they were carrying 
something all draped in black. When she 
saw this, she put the ball down and would not 
look at it again. She called again on Sunday 
(this had been on Friday) with her cousin, and 
we teased her about being afraid of the 
crystal, so she said she would just look at it 
once more. She took the ball, but immedi- 
ately laid it down again, saying, 4 No, I won't 
look, as the bed with the awful man in it is 
there again.' 

" When they went home, they heard that the 
cousin's father-in-law had died that (Sunday) 
afternoon, but to show he had never been in 
our thoughts, although we all knew he had not 
been well, no one suggested him ; his name was 
never mentioned in connection with the 
vision." 

With regard to this incident, Miss Rose, 
independently and without consultation with 
Miss Angus, wrote, that on looking at the 
glass ball after Miss Angus had said she saw 
a man ill in bed, — 

" I received quite a shock, for there perfectly 
clearly in a bright light, I saw stretched out 



DREAMS AND CRYSTAL-VISIONS 147 

in bed an old man, apparently dead ; for a few 
minutes I could not look, and on doing so once 
more there appeared a lady in black, etc. At 
the time I saw this I was staying with cousins 
and it was Friday evening. On Sunday we 
heard of the death of the father-in-law of one 
of my cousins, but my thoughts were not in 
the least about him when looking at the 
crystal. I may also say I did not recognize 
his features." 

This looks like a prophetic vision, or 
precognition of the death two or three days 
before it actually occurred; it may be only 
a chance coincidence, but if the evidence on 
behalf of precognition compels us eventually 
to accept it this case may well come under that 
designation. 

The following case is given by Sir Joseph 
Barnby, the well-known musician, and is 
quoted by Mr. Myers in his Human Personality, 
vol. i., p. 590. Sir J. Barnby writes — 

" I was invited by Lord and Lady Radnor 
to the wedding of their daughter, Lady Wilma 
Bouverie, which took place August 15, 1889. 

" I was met at Salisbury by Lord and Lady 
Radnor and driven to Longford Castle. In the 
course of the drive, Lady Radnor said to me : 
8 We have a young lady, Miss A., staying with us 
in whom, I think, you will be much interested. 
She possesses the faculty of seeing visions, 
and is otherwise closely connected with the 
spiritual world. Only last night she was 
looking in her crystal and described a room 
which she saw therein, as a kind of London 



148 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

dining-room. [The room described was not 
in London, but at L., and Miss A. particularly 
remarked that the floor was in large squares 
of black and white marble — as it is in the 
big hall at L., where family prayers are said. — 
H. M. Radnor.] With a little laugh, she added, 
' And the family are evidently at prayers, the 
servants are kneeling at the chairs round the 
room, and the prayers are being read by a tall 
and distinguished-looking gentleman with a 
very handsome, long grey beard.' With 
another little laugh, she continued : 4 A lady 
just behind him rises from her knees and 
speaks to him. He puts her aside with a wave 
of the hand, and continues his reading.' The 
young lady here gave a careful description 
of the lady who had risen from her knees. 

" Lady Radnor then said : ' From the de- 
scription given I cannot help thinking that the 
two principal personages described are Lord 
and Lady L., but I shall ask Lord L. this 
evening as they are coming by a later train, 
and I should like you to be present when the 
answer is given.' 

" The same evening, after dinner, I was 
talking to Lord L. when Lady Radnor came 
up to him and said : ' I want to ask you a 
question. I am afraid you will think it is a 
very silly one, but in any case I hope you 
will not ask me why I have put the question ? 5 
To this Lord L. courteously assented. She 
then said : ' Were you at home last night ? ' 
He replied, ' Yes.' She said : ' Were you 
having family prayers at such a time last 



DREAMS AND CRYSTAL-VISIONS 149 

evening ? ' With a slight look of surprise 
he replied, ' Yes, we were.' She then said : 
4 During the course of the prayers did Lady L. 
rise from her knees and speak to you, and did 
you put her aside with a wave of the hand ? ' 
Much astonished, Lord L. answered : ' Yes, 
that was so, but may I inquire why you 
have asked this question ? ' To which Lady 
Radnor answered : ' You promised you 
wouldn't ask me that.' " 

In commenting on the account Mr. Myers 
adds — 

" This incident has been independently 
recounted to me both by Lady Radnor and 
by Miss A. herself. Another small point not 
given by Sir J. Barnby is that Miss A. did not 
at first understand that family prayers were 
going on, but exclaimed : ' Here are a number 
of people coming into the room. Why, they're 
smelling their chairs.' " 

Among others who have the faculty of 
crystal -vision may be mentioned Miss Good- 
rich-Freer (now Mrs. Hans Spoer) — whose 
papers on this subject in the Proceedings of 
the S.P.R. (vol. v., etc.) are of great interest. 

Space will not allow the quotation of further 
illustrations of this strange faculty. What we 
find is a mingling of mere fantasy, dream, 
memory, telepathy, and clairvoyance; some- 
times apparently even prevision and traces 
of spirit communion. " A random glimpse," 
as Mr. Myers says, " into inner visions, a 
reflection caught at some odd angle from the 
universe, as it shines through the perturbing 



150 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

medium of that special soul." This, however, 
is precisely what we find in other directions 
of psychical research. The hidden subliminal 
self, sensitive to telepathic impress, emerges 
through various " autoscopes " accompanied 
with a medley of normal and supernormal 
knowledge. In fact, all autoscopes whether 
sensory or mechanical (p. 28) seem at times 
to become heteroscopes — " other viewers " — ■ 
a means whereby some distant intelligence 
appears able to give fragmentary glimpses of 
its presence. Automatic writing tells us the 
same story, and only by patient and long- 
continued labour can we unravel the tangled 
skein and discover the high transcendent 
powers that lie concealed in even the humblest 
human personality. 



CHAPTER XI 

SUPERNORMAL PERCEPTION: SEEING WITHOUT 
EYES 

The existence of some kind of supernormal 
percipience possessed by certain individuals 
has been widely believed in, as in cases of 
so-called second sight. The business of 
psychical research is to ascertain whether 
there is trustworthy evidence on behalf of 
that belief. The preceding chapter has 
afforded some evidence in its support, and we 
must devote the present chapter to a further 
examination of this subject. 

In the mesmeric trance, a state of " lu- 
cidity " or " clairvoyance," as it was called, 
was asserted by competent observers in 
the middle of the last century. Thus, Dr. 
Mayo, F.R.S. (referred to on p. 70), gives 
cases he himself had witnessed, which he 
thought could only be explained by " seeing 
without eyes." The entranced patient often 
appeared to locate his organ of transcendental 
vision in his hand, or pit of the stomach, or 
any part of the body that lent itself to the 
illusion. In 1826, the French Medical Com- 
mission appointed to inquire into mesmerism 
151 



152 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

relates several cases in which persons in the 
mesmeric trance could describe objects or read 
lines in a book, when their eyes were bandaged 
or eyelids closed by the fingers. But this may 
be explained by thought-transference, as we 
are not told whether the operators knew the 
thing selected. 

Here, for example, is a comparatively recent 
case, which appears on the borderland between 
telepathy and so-called clairvoyance. It is 
attested by one of the most eminent conti- 
nental physiologists now living. 

Professor C. Richet states (Proc. S.P.R., 
vol. vi.) — 

" On Monday, July 2, 1888, after having 
passed all the day in my laboratory, I hypno- 
tized Leonie at 8 p.m., and while she tried to 
make out a diagram concealed in an envelope 
I said to her quite suddenly : ' What has 
happened to M. Langlois ? ' Leonie knows 
M. Langlois from having seen him two or three 
times some time ago in my physiological 
laboratory, where he acts as my assistant. 
'He has burnt himself,' Leonie replied. 
' Good,' I said, 6 and where has he burnt 
himself ? ' ' On the left hand. It is not 
fire : it is — I don't know its name. Why 
does he not take care when he pours it out ? ' 
* Of what colour,' I asked, ' is the stuff which 
he pours out ? ' ' It is not red, it is brown ; 
he has hurt himself very much — the skin 
puffed up directly.' 

" Now, this description is admirably exact. 
At 4 p.m. that day M. Langlois had wished to 



SUPERNORMAL PERCEPTION 153 

pour some bromine into a bottle. He had 
done this clumsily, so that some of the 
bromine flowed on to his left hand, which held 
the funnel, and at once burnt him severely. 
Although he at once put his hand into water, 
wherever the bromine had touched it a blister 
was formed in a few seconds — a blister which 
one could not better describe than by saying, 
' the skin puffed up.' I need not say that 
Leonie had not left my house nor seen any one 
from my laboratory. Of this I am absolutely 
certain, and I am certain that I had not 
mentioned the incident of the burn to any one. 
Moreover, this was the first time for nearly 
a year that M. Langlois had handled bromine, 
and when Leonie saw him six months before 
at the laboratory he was engaged in experi- 
ments of quite another kind." 

We may regard this either as a case of tele- 
pathy or what has been termed "travelling 
clairvoyance." The reputed evidence on behalf 
of the latter is indeed more widespread and 
more ancient than for the former. As Mr. A. 
Lang says, " Evidence proves that precisely 
similar beliefs as to man's occasional power 
of ' opening the gates of distance ' have been 
entertained in a great variety of lands and 
ages, and by races in every condition of cul- 
ture." Mr. Lang gives instances of this 
among the Zulus, the Lapps, the Red Indians, 
the Peruvians, as well as cases, ancient and 
modern, of Scotch " second sight." Aubrey 
in his Miscellanies (1696), gives " an accurate 
account of second-sighted men in Scotland, 



154 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

in two letters from a learned friend of mine in 
Scotland." His learned correspondent con- 
cludes by remarking, " They generally term 
such as have this second sight Taishatrin. 
. . . Others call these men Phissichin from 
Phis, which is properly fore-sight or fore- 
knowledge." 

Swedenborg, who was in his day one of the 
leading savants of Europe, is alleged to have 
possessed this faculty, and occasionally could 
" open the gates of distance." The evidence 
was investigated at the time by the philosopher 
Kant, and is given in an appendix to his 
book, entitled Dreams of a Spirit Seer. 

The three most famous cases are : — 

(1) Swedenborg' s communication to the 
Queen of Sweden of some secret information, 
which she had asked him for, and believed that 
no living human being could have told him. 

(2) The widow of the Dutch ambassador 
at Stockholm, Madame Harteville, was called 
upon by a goldsmith to pay for a silver 
service which her deceased husband had 
purchased. She believed that her husband 
had paid for it, but could not find the receipt ; 
so she begged Swedenborg to ask her husband 
where it was. Three days later he came to 
her house and informed her, in the presence 
of some visitors, that he had conversed with 
her husband, and had learnt from him that 
the debt had been paid, and the receipt was in 
a bureau in an up-stairs room in her house. 
Madame Harteville replied that the cup- 
board had already been searched, but to no 



SUPERNORMAL PERCEPTION 155 

purpose. Swedenborg answered that the 
ghost of her husband had said that after 
pulling out the left-hand drawer a board 
would appear, and on drawing out this a 
secret compartment would be disclosed, con- 
taining his private Dutch correspondence and 
the receipt. The whole company went up- 
stairs, and the papers, with the receipt, were 
found, as described, in the secret compart- 
ment, of which no one had known before. 

(3) In September 1759, at four o'clock on 
a Saturday afternoon, Swedenborg arrived at 
Gottenburg from England, and was invited 
by a friend to his house. Two hours after he 
went out, and then came back and informed 
the company that a dangerous fire had just 
broken out in Stockholm (which is about fifty 
German miles from Gottenburg), and that it 
was spreading fast ; he was restless and went 
out often. He said that the house of one of 
his friends, whom he named, was already in 
ashes, and that his own was in danger. At 
eight o'clock, after he had been out again, 
he declared with joy that the fire was ex- 
tinguished at the third door from his house. 
This news occasioned great commotion 
throughout the whole city, and was announced 
to the Governor the same evening. 

On Sunday morning, Swedenborg was 
summoned to the Governor, who questioned 
him about the disaster. He described the 
fire precisely, how it had begun and in what 
manner it had ceased, and how long it had 
continued. On Monday evening a messenger 



156 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

arrived at Gottenburg, who had been dis- 
patched by the Board of Trade during the 
time of the fire. In the letters brought by 
him, the fire was described precisely as stated 
by Swedenborg, and next morning the news 
was further confirmed by information brought 
to the Governor by the Royal Courier. As 
Swedenborg had said, the fire had been 
extinguished at eight o'clock. 

Sixty or seventy years ago, when the public 
were profoundly interested in the novel and 
wonderful accounts of mesmeric phenomena, 
many cases of alleged clairvoyance were noted 
by Dr. Elliot son and others who were con- 
stantly engaged in hypnotic treatment of 
patients. One of the most remarkable cases 
was that of a girl named Ellen Dawson, who 
had been subject to epileptic fits as a child, 
for which she had been treated mesmerically 
and with great success by a West-end surgeon, 
Mr. W. Hands. The latter, observing that 
Ellen, when in the trance, could apparently 
see objects without the use of her eyes, tried 
to cultivate her clairvoyant faculty, and, it is 
asserted, she developed a power of accurately 
describing distant places and persons she had 
never seen with her normal vision. If tele- 
pathy be accepted as a vera causa no doubt it 
affords a partial explanation, but the frequent 
relation of facts afterwards confirmed, though 
at the time unknown to the hypnotizer and 
others present, as well as the vividness and 
accuracy of description given by the subject, 
unduly strain any telepathic hypothesis. 



SUPERNORMAL PERCEPTION 157 

Two most remarkable communications 
about Ellen Dawson's clairvoyance are to be 
found in the Zoist for 1845. The first is from 
Mr. Hands, who states that in order to 
satisfy himself that Ellen did not use her 
normal vision, he filled the covers of two pill- 
boxes with cotton-wool and tied one over 
each of Ellen's eyes with a broad strip of 
ribbon, taking care that the edges of the 
boxes rested on the skin : — 

" Still she read and distinguished as before. 
I now placed her " (Mr. Hands continues) " in 
a room from which I had shut out every ray 
of light and then presented her with some 
plates in Cuvier's Animal Kingdom; she 
described the birds and beasts and told 
accurately the colour of each, as I proved by 
going into the light to test her statements. 
She also distinguished the shades and hues of 
silks." 

This incident, assuming the observations 
are correct, presents an interesting psycho- 
logical puzzle, as the colours of objects are 
due to their action on light rays, by selective 
absorption or otherwise; in the absence of 
light, colour, as our eyes know it, has no 
existence. If Mr. Hands knew what the 
particular colours and coloured plates were, 
a telepathic explanation removes the diffi- 
culty, but apparently he did not, and tele- 
pathy does not explain other incidents. Thus 
Mr. Hands asked her to visit his birthplace, 
Berkeley (where Mrs. Hands was staying), 
140 miles from London. She accurately 



158 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

described the church at Berkeley and various 
monuments therein, and also the house where 
Mrs. Hands was staying ; asked what the 
latter was doing, Ellen said she was playing a 
game of cards, and described the other persons 
present. Then she exclaimed, " Mrs. H. 
has won the game and is getting up from her 
chair." All these details turned out to be 
perfectly correct, for Mr. Hands adds : "At 
this time (9 p.m.), as I subsequently learnt, 
Mrs. H. did rise from her chair, saying to 
her adversary, ' I have beaten you com- 
pletely.' " 

On another occasion, a lady having lost 
her brooch, asked Mr. Barth if Ellen, whom 
she had not seen before, could trace it when 
entranced. Accordingly she was put to sleep, 
whereupon 

'• Ellen Dawson described a former servant 
of Mrs. M.'s, who she said had stolen the 
brooch, and said that she had kept the case 
with some diamonds in it in her trunk, and 
'sold the brooch for a very small sum ; that it 
was then in a place like a cellar, with ' lots of 
other property,' silver spoons, etc., and that 
the servant had moved from the place she 
had lived at when she first left Mrs. M. 
This latter point was found to be correct, and 
Mrs. M. (who had suspected another of her 
servants), on the advice of the clairvoyant, 
sent for the girl to come to her house and 
taxed her with the theft. Finally, the girl 
confessed that she had stolen the brooch and 
pawned it, keeping the case and two diamond 



SUPERNORMAL PERCEPTION 159 

chains which were worn with the brooch. All 
the property was finally recovered." 

Many other well-attested cases by good 
observers were published both in England 
and the Continent some sixty years ago. Nor 
is the evidence for clairvoyance confined to 
the older mesmerists. One of the members 
of the S.P.R., Mr. Dobbie, living in Australia, 
has in recent years had several clairvoyants 
among subjects whom he had hypnotized. A 
case like the preceding one is given by him in 
the Proceedings of the S.P.R. Mr. Adamson, 
a leading citizen in Adelaide, communicates 
the facts, which are briefly as follows. His 
daughter had lost a trinket off her watch- 
chain, and both went to Mr. Dobbie to see 
if his clairvoyant could trace it. When en- 
tranced, the clairvoyant described what the 
trinket was, where it was lost, the person who 
found it, and the place where he had put it, 
and gave so exact a description of the house 
that it was readily found. Not only was the 
trinket thus recovered, but on questioning the 
finder, Mr. Adamson learnt that it was picked 
up on the road exactly as the clairvoyant had 
described. 

In another case in which the clairvoyant 
was tested, she accurately described what a 
gentleman, then fifty miles away, was doing, 
the furniture in the room where he was, and 
a book he was holding. On returning home 
a week later, the gentleman was astonished 
to hear what the clairvoyant had said, and 
stated that she was perfectly correct in every 



160 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

particular, even to the book which he had 
purchased on his journey from home. (Proc. 
S.P.R., vol. vii., p. 68 et seq.) 

Some critics have objected that the evidence 
on behalf of clairvoyance is never written down 
before the facts are confirmed ; this, however, 
has been done, as in the following case sent 
to us by an American naturalist, Dr. Elliot 
Coues, of Washington. It seems that a friend 
of Dr. Coues, Mrs. Conner, was going up 
the steps of her residence in Washington one 
afternoon, carrying some papers, when she 
stumbled and fell. About the same moment 
a friend of hers, Mrs. B., had a singular 
vision of the whole incident whilst she was 
in her own house a mile and a half away. 
The vision was so vivid that Mrs. B. wrote 
to Mrs. Conner the same evening about it, 
telling her, in a letter seen by Dr. Coues, that 
when sewing in her room at two o'clock that 
afternoon " what should I see but your 
own dear self . . . falling up the front steps 
in the yard. You had on your black skirt and 
velvet waistband, your little straw bonnet, and, 
in your hand, some papers. When you fell 
your hat went in one direction and the papers 
in another. It was all so plain to me that I 
had ten notions to one to dress and come over 
and see if it were true. Is there any possible 
truth in it ? I can distinctly call to mind 
the house in which you live, but can't for 
the life of me tell whether there are any 
steps." 

On investigation it appears that not only 



SUPERNORMAL PERCEPTION 161 

was the description of the dress, bonnet, 
etc., perfectly correct, but also the entrance 
to the house and the steps up to it. Mrs. 
Conner had only moved to this house a 

few days before and Mrs. B had never 

seen it. {Journal S.P.R., vol. iv., p. 89.) 

Perhaps the most extraordinary and appar- 
ently unimpeachable evidence of clairvoyance 
is given in a little book kindly sent to me by 
Dr. Heysinger, of Philadelphia, who suggests 
the term telegnosis, or knowing at a distance, 
instead of clairvoyance. The book bears the 
strange title of " X + Y = Z, or the Sleeping 
Preacher of North Alabama." It was published 
in 1876, and includes statements by numerous 
witnesses of the supernormal knowledge 
possessed by the sleeping preacher, as he was 
called, a respected Presbyterian minister, the 
Rev. C. B. Sanders. Additional corroboration 
of the facts was obtained by Professor W. 
James and Dr. Hodgson. The late U.S. Chief 
Justice Brickell, whose home was near Mr. 
Sanders' residence, states that the witnesses 
named in the book are of the highest char- 
acter, and some of considerable learning. In 
this case any explanation by fraud, collusion, 
or fabrication cannot be suggested. It seems 
from the evidence of the medical man, Dr. 
Thach, who attended Mr. Sanders, that his 
patient periodically went into trances, often 
accompanied with violent paroxysms and 
extreme sensitiveness to touch. It was during 
these trances that Mr. Sanders became con- 
scious of events taking place at a distant spot 

F 



162 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

to which his attention was directed. On 
returning to his normal state, he was totally 
ignorant of anything that had occurred during 
the trance or " sleep," — which lasted from a 
few minutes to days. During the sleep Mr. 
Sanders ignored his own name, and signed 
himself X + Y = Z. 

The Rev. G. W. Mitchell, who gives a careful 
record of the evidence relating to Mr. Sanders' 
clairvoyance, quotes sixty-nine witnesses who 
testify to the fact that during his sleep he 
described incidents afterwards verified, which 
could not possibly have been known to him 
through normal means. Among these wit- 
nesses are ten clergymen and six physicians, 
the evidence being corroborated by others 
present. We have only space to quote one 
or two incidents. Here, for example, is an 
amusing case. Mr. Sanders having been 
confined to his bed from a dislocated thigh, a 
neighbouring minister, the Rev. De Witt, one 
day took him over some delicacy and had 
to cross a fence before getting to the house. 
Having both hands full and the fence being 
very unstable, with its top rail loose, he 
nearly tumbled off in crossing it. On arriving 
at Mr. Sanders' house, more than half a mile 
away, he found Mr. Sanders in his so-called 
" sleep," but animated and laughing, saying 
he was greatly amused at the predicament in 
which De Witt had been placed in crossing the 
fence with his hands full. As it was impossible 
to see the fence from the house and no one 
else present had witnessed the occurrence, 



SUPERNORMAL PERCEPTION 163 

Mr. De Witt was greatly astonished. A 
friend who was present at the time, Mr. J. W. 
Pruitt, writes as follows concerning this 
incident — 

" I certify that one day about the middle 
of the month of February 1866, while Brother 
Sanders was confined to his bed from a dislo- 
cated thigh, I was at his house, and he was 
lying in his bed and in one of his so-called 
6 sleeps.' He attracted my attention by a 
hearty laugh. I asked him the cause of his 
amusement. He replied, ' I was laughing at 
De Witt.' I asked what was De Witt doing. 
He said, ' He was having a hard scuffle to keep 
from falling off the fence, for the top rail was 
turning with him and he was trying to keep 
from falling over it.' Nothing more was said 
on the subject until De Witt arrived, which 
was in ten or fifteen minutes. 

" The fence where the difficulty occurred was 
from three-fourths to a mile distant, on the 
other side of a thick grove of timber and under- 
bush, and of an intervening hill. 

" And I further certify that no communica- 
tion from any person or source was received 
in reference to De Witt until he arrived and 
confirmed what Mr. Sanders said. 

" J. W. Pruit." 

Several cases, corroborated by witnesses, 
are also recorded of Mr. Sanders' knowledge 
that a distant person was just dying or dead, 
of accidents occurring to friends at some 

F 2 



164 PYSCHICAL RESEARCH 

distance, of a fire taking place in a distant 
town, with a description of a shop in which 
it broke out and the extent of its ravages, 
much resembling the far vision of Swedenborg 
already quoted. Various cases are also given 
of Mr. Sanders in his sleep finding lost articles, 
coins, a watch-chain, and specifying correctly 
where they would be found. Here is a striking 
instance, attested by three witnesses; Mr. 
Bentley writes — 

" Some time during the summer [1867] a 
bunch of keys, among which was my wheat- 
garner key, was lost. After a lapse of about 
one week, I requested Mr. William White, who 
was employed in the store and boarded at 
the Rev. C. B. Sanders' in the village, on 
going to his dinner, to ask him to tell me where 
my keys were. On his return Mr. White 
said he made the request; but Mr. Sanders 
paid no attention to what he said, he being 
in one of his spells. However, during the 
same afternoon, while my younger sister, in 
company with other persons, was at his 
house, he told her that my keys were under 
the steps at the west door of my dwelling. 
In consequence of this information I returned 
home earlier than usual. As soon as I arrived, 
I told my wife what I had heard. She ran 
immediately and found the keys under the 
doorstep, just as Mr. Sanders had said; and 
somewhat rusty. They must have been 
thrown there a week before by a little child 
that played about the house. 



SUPERNORMAL PERCEPTION 165 

" I add that I know Mr. Sanders had not 
been in my house, nor on the place for at least 
twelve months before that time. 

" A. J. Bentley." 

The other witnesses present certify that 
" the above statements are true, as far as 
they relate to us personally; and that we 
heard all the particulars as above mentioned, 
at the time they occurred." Another case 
of the finding of a gold coin from Mr. Sanders' 
description of the exact position in which it 
was actually discovered is signed by four 
witnesses, but the details are too long to quote 
here. 

Some may be disposed to say, if these facts 
are well established why does not Scotland 
Yard keep a professional clairvoyant ? Like 
all other psychical phenomena such cases as 
we have described are rare, and frequently 
normal and supernormal knowledge are inter- 
mixed. At present, at any rate, they must be 
studied for their scientific interest rather than 
for their practical utility. It is said that, 
years ago a challenge was made to give a 
£1,000 bank-note, enclosed in a sealed opaque 
box, to any clairvoyant who could read its 
number. A similar challenge has been made 
as I write these pages, for a conclusive proof 
of thought-transference. Others, no doubt, 
would give a large multiple of this sum for 
a demonstrative evidence of survival after 
death. All such pecuniary short-cuts to gain 
knowledge are futile. Those who wish to 



166 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

arrive at any definite conclusions with regard 
to either rare normal or alleged supernormal 
phenomena must pay due attention to the 
subject and study the evidence of trustworthy 
and independent witnesses, as the late Pro- 
fessor Tait said concerning the phenomenon of 
" globe-lightning." 

We may close this chapter by recalling 
Goethe's remark to Eckermann : "If any one 
advances anything new . . . people resist with 
all their might; they act as if they neither 
heard nor could comprehend; they speak of 
the new view with contempt, as if it were not 
worth the trouble of even so much as an 
investigation or a regard; and thus a new 
truth may wait a long time before it can 
make its way." 



1L7 



CHAPTER XII 

THE SO-CALLED DIVINING- OR DOWSING-ROD 

The singular success of certain " dowsers '* 
in locating underground water, hard by wells 
that had been sunk in vain, led the Council of 
the S.P.R. to ask me to investigate and report 
upon this subject some twenty years ago. 
Like most people, I was at that time not only 
sceptical but inclined to scoff at what seemed 
a mere relic of an ancient superstition. Sci- 
entific men as a body held that dowsers were 
merely clever charlatans and the twisting of 
the forked rod a bit of stage-play. It soon 
became evident that such views were absurd, 
— for one thing many successful dowsers were 
amateurs, whose good faith it was impossible 
to question. Men of distinction and of high 
rank, church dignitaries, and even the president 
of a geological society, informed me they were 
unable to restrain the motion of the forked 
twig and abundant water had been found at 
the places so indicated. Nor was their suc- 
cess due to the detection of surface signs of 
water, for ignorant country-folk and young 
children were no less successful as dowsers. 
In fact the evidence on behalf of dowsers, in 
167 



168 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

finding comparatively shallow supplies of 
potable water in very unlikely spots, was far 
more extensive and remarkable than one had 
imagined. Hence the collection and verifica- 
tion at first hand of such evidence, the ex- 
perimental tests made and the hunting up the 
history of the subject became a formidable 
task and it was not until after some years that 
my first lengthy report was published in the 
Proceedings of the S.P.R. for 1895. This was 
followed by a second lengthy report in 1900, 
and abundant materials have since accumu- 
lated for a third report. 

Obviously in a brief survey such as this it 
will be impossible to do more than relate a 
few cases personally investigated, and give an 
outline of the conclusions arrived at, referring 
those who wish for fuller information to the 
monographs mentioned above. 

So far as historical researches in the British 
Museum and other libraries extend, the first 
mention of the forked rod, or virgula divina, as 
it was then called, appears to be in an ancient 
Latin folio, entitled Sebastian Munster's Cos- 
mography published early in 1500. At that 
time the rod was only used in the search for 
metallic ores, and a quaint picture is given in 
this work of a diviner striding over the hilly 
country with his uplifted forked rod prospect- 
ing for minerals. A little later the first great 
treatise on Mining, Agricola's De re metallica, 
published in Basle in 1540, gives a more 
detailed account of its use for this purpose, 
with a couple of admirable plates showing the 



DIVINING- OR DOWSING-ROD 169 

diviner at work. Agricola calls the rod the 
virgula furcata, forked rod, to distinguish it 
from the virgula divina, the name attached to 
the ancient superstitious practice of rhabdo- 
mancy, — divining by bits of sticks, referred 
to by Cicero and other classical writers. 
Nevertheless, the word divining-rod has per- 
sisted, together with some of the superstitious 
notions attached to the old virgula. 

The miners of Saxony and the Hartz 
mountains seem to have been the first to use 
the forked rod. Possibly they were led to its 
use from the belief, once universal, even among 
educated men like Melanchthon, that metallic 
ores attracted certain trees which thereupon 
drooped over the place where those ores were 
to be found ; the drooping no doubt being due 
to the soil or other causes. A branch of the 
tree was therefore cut and held to see where it 
drooped ; later on a branch was held in each 
hand and the extremities tied together as 
shown in an old Italian plate; finally, for 
convenience, a forked branch was cut, the two 
ends grasped one in each hand with palms 
upwards, the arms of the holder were then 
brought to the side of the body, so that the 
forked rod was held in somewhat unstable 
equilibrium, and the " diviner " set forth on 
his quest with, in old time, certain solemnities 
and invocations. 

In Queen Elizabeth's reign the exploitation 
of the Cornish mines was entrusted to a few 
notable " Merchant Venturers," who went 
over to Saxony to examine the best methods 



170 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

of prospecting and mining ore. These mer- 
chant venturers probably brought back with 
them a " diviner " with his rod, for soon after 
we find its use common in Cornwall. Now, the 
colloquial German word for the rod was then 
schlag-ruthe or striking rod; this, translated 
into the Middle English, became the duschan or 
striking rod, and finally " deusing or dowsing 
rod." Locke, born under the shadow of the 
Mendips, where the rod early came into use 
in the search for lead ore, is the first writer 
using the word " deusing rod," in 1691. To 
dowse or " strike " the sail is still a common 
expression in Cornwall, so we get the word 
" dowser " now used throughout the south-west 
of England. The phrase to " strike " the lode 
in a mine, or to " strike " oil, may thus have 
arisen. The esteem in which the dowsing-rod 
was held by old English miners is shown by a 
passage in Robert Boyle's famous scientific 
essays published in 1663, and still more by 
Pryce's standard work on Cornish mines pub- 
lished in 1778. Pryce tells us that nearly 
all the Cornish mines were located by the 
dowsing-rod and to the present day it is 
widely used for this purpose. 

It was not until near the end of the eight- 
eenth century that the rod was used in 
England for rinding underground water, and 
as might be expected it first came into use for 
this purpose in the south-west of England. 
Two centuries earlier it was employed for this 
purpose in the south of Europe. For in a recent 
admirable Life of St. Teresa of Spain, the 



DIVINING- OR DOWSING-ROD 171 

following incident is narrated : Teresa in 
1568 was offered the site for a convent to 
which there was only one objection, there was 
no water supply; happily, a Friar Antonio 
came up with a twig in his hand, stopped at a 
certain spot and appeared to be making the 
sign of the cross; but Teresa says, " Really I 
cannot be sure if it were the sign he made, at 
any rate he made some movement with the 
twig and then he said, ' Dig just here ' ; they 
dug, and lo ! a plentiful fount of water gushed 
forth, excellent for ' drinking, copious for 
washing, and it never ran dry.' " As the writer 
of this Life remarks : " Teresa, not having 
heard of dowsing, has no explanation for this 
event," and regarded it as a miracle. This, I 
believe, is the first historical reference to 
dowsing for water. In a little book published 
at Lyons in 1693, entitled La verge de Jacob (it 
should be called, as Sir Thomas Browne re- 
marks, " theMosaical rod," not Jacob's rod), 
pictures are given showing different kinds of 
rod, or baguette, different ways of holding it, 
and the success attending those who can 
use it in discovering springs. Other and more 
learned writers of that date, such as the Abbe 
de Vallemont (1695) and Father le Brun 
(1702), deal with the mystery of the baguette 
and afford evidence of its widespread use in 
water-finding throughout arid districts in the 
south of France. 

As stated in a previous chapter, the use 
of the baguette in the seventeenth century, 
especially in the south of France, spread to many 



172 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

other hidden things, such as the finding of 
buried treasure and even the tracking of 
criminals ! Jacques Aymar, a poor mason 
of Dauphiny, obtained great reputation as a 
sourcier in 1692, and when a terrible murder 
was committed in a wine-shop in Lyons he 
was sent for to track the criminals with his 
baguette, as no trace of them could be found. 
The whole details of this famous case have 
been preserved in contemporary documents. 
Arriving at the scene of the murder with his 
rod, Aymar started off in pursuit of the 
murderers like a bloodhound on the scent : 
he tracked them to the river Rhone, followed 
them from place to place, discovered there 
were three engaged in the crime, traced two 
of them till they crossed the frontier, finally 
ran down the other one, a hunchback, who 
was arrested, confessed the crime, and was 
executed : the last person in Europe who 
suffered that terrible penalty of being " broken 
at the wheel." Strangely enough the deposi- 
tions made at the trial showed that Aymar 
was correct in every detail, witnesses testi- 
fying to the flight and halting-places of the 
culprits in the very places Aymar had indi- 
cated. The keen interest this case excited, 
and the critical examination it underwent, is 
shown by the large amount of literature it 
called forth for some years afterwards, and 
Aymar became notorious throughout Europe. 
He was, however, subsequently somewhat 
discredited owing to his failure in some tests 
devised by the Prince de Conde. 



DIVINING- OR DOWSING-ROD 173 

The often fallacious and mischievous results 
which followed the indiscriminate use of the 
baguette for all sorts of purposes rightly led 
to its use being prohibited in the moral world 
early in the eighteenth century. Its wide- 
spread use in finding underground water 
nevertheless continued throughout France 
and many other parts of Europe. One of the 
physicians of Louis XVI, Dr. Thouvenel, 
published able and lengthy reports in 1781 
and 1784 of the results of his critical tests of 
a sourcier named Bleton, a charity boy, who 
was perhaps the most remarkable dowser 
known in history. According to contem- 
porary evidence, Bleton by his discovery of 
numerous underground springs in an arid 
province in France " converted a desert into 
a fruitful country." Nor must we suppose, 
as we are apt to do, that the critical and 
sceptical spirit belongs exclusively to ourselves 
or to our own age; such startling results as 
were achieved by Bleton led to the most 
searching inquiry, the severest tests were 
applied, and many of the most sceptical were 
convinced. 

Later on, in our own country, De Quincey tells 
us of the wonderful success of the " jowsers," 
as he calls them, in Somerset, where in certain 
parts underground water is very hard to 
locate, and where scientific skill is frequently 
at fault. At the present day landowners and 
well-sinkers in the south-west of England, 
when in difficulty where to sink a well, almost 
invariably employ a dowser; usually an un- 



174 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

educated man who has discovered that he 
possesses this peculiar " gift," as he terms it. 
The use of the dowsing-rod has also spread to 
America, where it is employed not only in the 
search for underground ores and water, but 
also for finding oil- springs. Here, however, 
as mentioned on p. 22, a sort of plumb-bob, 
suspended by a wire or chain, is frequently 
employed, as it is also in some parts of France. 
A recent number of the Journal of the Ameri- 
can S.P.R. gives some striking results of 
numerous successful tests made with a dowser 
using this ancient magic pendulum. 

During the latter half of the nineteenth 
century in England, among other notable 
dowsers, John Mullins, of Wiltshire, achieved 
extraordinary success in locating underground 
water, especially when all other means had 
failed. In some districts, of course, under- 
ground water can be found anywhere upon 
digging down a few feet, e. g. where a bed of 
gravel rests upon an impermeable bed of clay ; 
but these are places where the dowser is rarely 
called in. It is in what may be called " fissure 
water," which is the geologist's difficulty, 
that the dowser's opportunity occurs. At first 
it seemed to me probable that the successful 
results were merely due to the dowser having 
a shrewd eye for the ground, experience having 
taught him the surface signs of underground 
water. But this hypothesis broke down ; then 
it seemed likely his success was due to lucky 
hits, which were remembered and the failures 
forgotten : this theory also had to be given up. 



DIVINING- OR DOWSING-ROD 175 

Finally, and with reluctance, I was driven to 
the conclusion that certain persons really pos- 
sessed an instinct or faculty new to science, 
of which the muscular spasm, that causes the 
twisting of the forked rod, is the outward and 
visible sign. It is impossible to give here even 
an outline of the evidence on which this con- 
clusion rests ; a brief summary of a few remark- 
able cases, which I have personally investi- 
gated, is all that can be attempted. 

The late Sir Henry Harben had built a 
mansion, water towers, etc., on his fine estate 
near Horsham, in Sussex. He then had a 
well, 90 feet deep, sunk, hoping to get water, 
but the well was dry. Acting upon expert 
advice, he next had a well, 55 feet deep, sunk 
in another place, with no result. Then he was 
advised to sink a third well at another spot; 
this was done, and a huge well, 100 feet deep, 
was sunk in the Horsham clay ; alas ! little or 
no water was found. Scientific experts then 
advised him to run adits in different directions 
at the bottom of this big well. This he did at 
the cost of £1,000, but the result was a com- 
plete failure. Finally in despair, he reluctantly 
sent for the dowser John Mullins. Sir Henry 
met him at the station, drove him to his 
place, and gave him no information. Mullins 
perambulated the estate holding his forked 
twig, and, after searching for some time in 
vain, at last the dowsing-rod turned violently, 
and he asserted an abundant supply of water 
would be obtained at that spot at a depth of 
under 20 feet; another spot was found close 



176 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

by, and both were on a small elevation. Two 
wells were dug at these spots, through a sand- 
stone rock, and an immense perennial 
supply of excellent water was found at about 
15 feet deep. It is true, shallow wells are 
generally objectionable, but this happens to 
be an excellent potable water, as it comes 
from the hill-top. This sandstone cap over 
the Horsham clay was unsuspected, being 
covered with surface soil and grass. The 
explanation of the dowser's success might 
possibly have been attributed to a sharp eye 
for the ground, had it not been for the fact 
that the dowser was no geologist, was a stran- 
ger to the locality, and the spot had been 
passed over by the scientific experts previ- 
ously engaged. 

' The next case is still more remarkable, and 
here J. Mullins was also concerned. In 1887 
the proprietors of an extensive bacon factory 
at Waterford, Messrs. Richardson & Co., 
needed a larger water supply than they pos- 
sessed; accordingly, they had a well 62 feet 
deep sunk at the most promising spot, but 
no water was found. They then obtained 
professional advice, and, based on geological 
considerations, determined to have a boring 
made at another spot. This was carried out 
and a bore-hole 292 feet deep was sunk, and, 
as only a trifling quantity of water was ob- 
tained, the bore-hole was widened; but it 
was no use, the yield of water was so insignifi- 
cant that the bore-hole was abandoned. The 
next year, acting upon other skilled advice, 



DIVINING- OR DOWSING-ROD 177 

they had a bore-hole, 7 inches diameter, sunk 
at the bottom of the 62-feet well. The work 
was undertaken by the Diamond-drill Rock- 
boring Company. With difficulty, 612 feet 
were bored through a very hard silurian rock, 
but no water was obtained. The boring was, 
however, continued 338 feet deeper, or a total 
of 950 feet, which — added to the depth of the 
well — made 1,012 feet in all from the surface. 
The result was a complete failure, and this bore- 
hole, which cost nearly £1,000, was abandoned. 
Then, acting upon the best geological advice, 
another spot was selected, and a bore-hole 52 
feet deep was made. The strata encountered 
were, however, identically the same, and 
geologists advised the firm to go no farther, 
as the quest was hopeless. They were con- 
sidering the advisability of moving their 
factory elsewhere when they were urged to 
try John Mullins, the English dowser. Mullins 
was sent for from Wiltshire. He came over, 
was told nothing of what had been done, he 
walked over the premises, about 700 by 
800 feet in area, asked no questions, but 
traversed the ground silently, holding his 
dowsing-rod. Suddenly, at one spot, only a 
few yards from the deep bore-hole, the forked 
twig twisted so violently that it broke in his 
hands. Here Mullins declared there was an 
abundant supply of water, which he estimated 
would be found at 80 or 90 feet below the 
surface. At two or three other places hard 
by the rod also twisted as he walked in 
and out of the sheds. Boring was begun at 



178 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

the spot indicated by Mullins, where the rod 
broke. It was considered a waste of money, 
and a local geologist was asked to report pro- 
gress to an officer of the Irish Geological 
Survey. His letters, written at the time, I 
have been allowed to copy, and the result 
reads like a fairy tale. At a depth of rather 
less than 90 feet water suddenly rushed up 
the bore-hole, pumping was begun, and so 
great was the yield that the bore-hole was 
enlarged to a well, and from that time (1889) 
to the present an unfailing supply of excellent 
water, of from 3,000 to 5,000 gallons an hour, 
has been obtained from the dowser's well. 
Mr. Kilroe, of H.M. Geological Survey, has 
kindly investigated the whole matter for me, 
and his report shows that Mullins must have 
struck a line of fault or narrow fissure in the 
hard " ordovician rock," as the water-bearing 
points he fixed on all lie in a straight line. 
Through this fissure the water, no doubt, 
streamed from the adjacent high ground, but 
there were no surface indications of this 
fissure, as the rock was covered by 40 feet of 
boulder clay. 

Here, again, are the results of some severe 
tests to which an amateur dowser, Mr. J. H. 
Jones, of Waterford, was submitted by an 
experienced lawyer, my friend Sir John 
Franks, C.B., the former Secretary to the 
Irish Land Commission. Sir John wanted a 
water supply on some property of his in West 
Kilkenny, and, being very sceptical as to 
dowsing, tested Mr. Jones as follows. It 



DIVINING- OR DOWSING-ROD 179 

seems there are some old long-disused wells on 
the property with nothing on the surface to 
show where they were. Sir John writes to 
me that Mr. Jones, who was a stranger to him 
and to the locality, " had never been over the 
ground before and knew nothing of these 
wells, which were only apparent when quite 
close, with no paths leading to them ; he (Mr. 
Jones) quartered the ground backwards and 
forwards like a dog looking for game . . . 
found the direction of flow of the water, fol- 
lowed it steadily until he hit off the place 
where the concealed wells are. The last test 
was quite wonderful, as I brought him quite 
half a mile away to the top of the watershed, 
to a place from which he could not have had 
an idea where the well opened, in a spot quite 
out of sight until one got within two yards of 
it, but he hit it off with absolute accuracy. 
In the place where he indicated a site to sink 
for a new well, there were no surface indica- 
tions at all, and it was quite half a mile away 
from any of the old wells. We had to cut 
and blast principally through solid rock, 38 feet 
down before we hit the spring. There are 
now 20 feet of water in this well." 

I was anxious to put the dowser to the test 
of comparing his indications with those of 
another independent dowser, and ascertain- 
ing whether both would indicate the same 
spots where water would be found, and also 
where it would not be found. A site was 
therefore selected on a mountain slope in Co. 
Wicklow which no dowser had ever visited, 



180 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

and where the most shrewd observer could 
not possibly predict beforehand the presence 
or absence of underground water at any 
particular spot. The rock is sandstone and 
quartzite, and water springs only occur in a 
few places. I sent for a good English dowser, 
Mr. W. Stone, who came over specially from 
Lincolnshire, where he lived. The field was 
covered with grass, and the bed-rock was 
believed to be only a few feet below the sur- 
face. The dowser marched to and fro, and 
fixed on two spots where he said plenty of 
water would be found within 20 feet from 
the surface, and another adjacent spot where 
he said no water would be found. Then I 
took him to another field on the other side of 
the mountain, here he declared no water 
would be found anywhere, the forked twig 
refusing to move in his hands. 

A second dowser, a successful amateur, was 
then tried a few weeks later ; he knew nothing 
of the previous dowser's visit. His indica- 
tions exactly coincided with those of the first 
dowser. Boring apparatus was obtained and 
a set of bore-holes were made, first in one 
field, then in the other. The bed-rock was 
deeper than we thought, and after boring 
through 16 feet of hard, dry boulder clay, at 
the spot where the dowser said water would 
be found, a splendid spring of water was en- 
countered. At the spot, a few yards distant, 
where the dowser said there was no water, 
we bored down to the solid rock, and spent a 
week boring into the rock, but no water was 



DIVINING- OR DOWSING-ROD 181 

found. At the third place where he pre- 
dicted water we found on boring a splendid 
supply at 18 feet below the surface. The 
first and third borings showed that a bed of 
sand and gravel, through which the under- 
ground water streamed, lay above the bed- 
rock and below the surface boulder clay. But 
how had the dowser hit upon this permeable 
water-line, when there was nothing whatever 
to indicate its presence ? In the other field, on 
the other side of the mountain, which seemed 
much more likely to be water-bearing, but 
where both the dowsers said no water would 
be found, we bored in several places down 
to the solid rock, spending nearly a month 
making bore-holes, but not a drop of water 
was found. 

It was in consequence of the unexpected 
and plentiful supply of water found in the 
first mountain field, that I secured the land 
for the purpose of a country cottage, which 
was subsequently built, and a well sunk in 
place of the bore-hole ; even in times of great 
drought — when most springs have run dry — 
this well at Carrigoona has never failed. 

These cases are only illustrations (though 
striking ones) of upwards of a hundred other 
cases I have investigated of the dowser's 
success when other means had failed. No 
doubt there are rogues who pretend to be 
dowsers, and who hopelessly fail when under- 
ground water is difficult to locate; and, no 
doubt also, when a large water supply to a 
town is needed, it would be far better to seek 



182 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

skilled geological advice than trust to even 
the best dowser. 

The twisting of the forked twig occurs with 
many persons who are not good dowsers ; with 
such any subconscious suggestion will start 
its motion. A dowser requires to be tested 
before he can be relied upon, and it is 
always better before sinking a well to have 
the independent evidence of more than 
one water-finder : for the dowser is by no 
means infallible, though he generally thinks 
he is. 

What is the explanation of this peculiar 
gift, or instinct, if such it be, that is possessed 
by a good dowser ? The dowser himself 
usually thinks it is electricity, but that is 
only a convenient, and to the ignorant a 
meaningless, word, used to account for any 
mysterious occurrence. If the dowser knows 
that he himself or his forked twig is insulated 
from the ground, it is true the rod will not 
work, but if he doesnH know it, although good 
insulation has secretly been effected, the rod 
works as well as ever, and vice versa. Pre- 
cisely the same effect of suggestion occurs, if 
the dowser be tried with radio-active sub- 
stances and is disposed to believe that is the 
cause : or if he believes the rod moves upward 
for approaching underground water and down- 
ward on receding from it ; or if it turns, for 
minerals when he holds a piece of ore in his 
hand, or for water if he holds a wet rag, or 
just the reverse of this, as is actually the case 
in some parts. All these are well-known 



DIVINING- OR DOWSING-ROD 183 

effects of suggestion, and the dowser is a very- 
suggestible subject. 

The sudden twisting of the twig, even the 
violent breaking of one branch of it, upon 
attempting to restrain its gyration, is an in- 
voluntary act, and probably only a remarkable 
instance of unconscious muscular action, as 
explained in Chapter II. It is true that 
cultured men of scientific tastes who are 
dowsers, like Dean Ovenden, utterly deny 
this explanation of its sudden motion and 
believe an unknown force of some kind is 
the true cause ; but if so, it must be an ex- 
ternal force of which we have not the remotest 
conception. The chief question, however, is 
the nature of the faculty which leads a good 
dowser to discover the hidden spring or 
metallic ore when other means have failed. 

The explanation, I believe, is not physical, 
but psychical. All the evidence points to the 
fact that the good dowser subconsciously 
possesses the faculty of clairvoyance, a 
supersensuous perceptive power such as we 
have described in a previous chapter. This 
gives rise to an instinctive, but not conscious, 
detection of the hidden object for which he 
is in search. This obscure and hitherto unre- 
cognized human faculty reveals itself by 
creating an automatic or involuntary muscular 
spasm that twists the forked rod. Some- 
times it produces a curious malaise or 
transient discomfort, which furnishes some 
dowsers with a sufficient indication to enable 
them to dispense with the use of a forked 



184 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

twig, or loop of wire, used by some. This 
hypothesis I have put to the test of experi- 
ment with a good amateur dowser and found 
he really possessed this kind of second sight. 
If so dowsers ought to be able to find other 
hidden things, besides water and minerals, 
and this is the case. Long ago the divining- 
rod was used in the search for buried treasure 
and hidden coins, and although we may smile 
at such credulity, nevertheless there is in 
recent times good evidence of the dowser 
John Mullins repeatedly finding carefully 
hidden coins. With two amateur dowsers, 
Mr. J. F. Young and Miss Miles, I have made 
numerous experiments to ascertain their 
powers in this respect. The experiments 
were in all cases arranged so as to exclude 
the possibility of their gaining any knowledge, 
from unconscious indications given by myself, 
of the position of the coin, hidden in their 
absence. To get rid of possible telepathy 
was more difficult; the person who alone 
knew where the coin was hidden was excluded 
from the room and unaware when the trial 
was begun; this made no difference in the 
results, which, though not invariably success- 
ful, were far beyond any success that could be 
achieved by mere chance. 

There is, therefore, very strong presumptive 
evidence that a good dowser is one who 
possesses a supernormal perceptive power, 
seeing as it were without eyes. Like other 
supernormal faculties it resides in the sub- 
liminal self and usually reveals itself through 



DIVINING- OR DOWSING-ROD 185 

some involuntary muscular action. Possibly 
a like faculty of discernment beyond the 
power of vision may exist in certain animals 
and birds, and afford an explanation of the 
mystery of many otherwise inexplicable cases 
of homing and migratory instincts. 

If the case of Jacques Aymar, narrated on 
a previous page, can be relied on, it might 
be accounted for by an extension of the 
clairvoyant faculty to the supernormal de- 
tection of traces of scent or footprints left by 
the criminals. Records exist of certain old 
Indian tribes in Mexico, among whom were 
certain persons possessing a like faculty, and 
from the Indian word for these men came the 
name Zahoris (meaning gifted with second 
sight or clairvoyant) applied to wandering 
individuals in Spain in the sixteenth century, 
of whom are related (as early as 1515) wonder- 
ful stories of their strange occult gifts of 
vision, etc. 

Whatever truth there may be in these old 
stories, we are less inclined to ridicule them as 
fables after the conclusions to which we have 
been led as regards dowsing. These conclu- 
sions are: (1) that those who really possess 
this curious faculty are rare, and many pre- 
tenders exist; the good dowser is a case of 
nascitur non fit; (2) the involuntary motion 
of the forked twig which occurs with certain 
persons, is due to a muscular spasm that may 
be excited in different ways; (3) the explan- 
ation of the success of good dowsers, after 
prolonged and crucial tests, is — like that of 



186 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

any other obscure human faculty or instinct 
— a matter for further physiological and 
psychological research, though provisionally 
we may entertain the working hypothesis 
suggested, viz. unconscious clairvoyance, an 
aspect of what Mr. Myers terms telcesthesia, 
"perception at a distance." 



CHAPTER XIII 

HAUNTINGS AND POLTERGEISTS 

Among the most popular of traditional 
"ghost-stories" are those of haunted houses 
and places. Cases of reputed hauntings are 
to be found in the literature of all countries, 
both ancient and modern, the types remaining 
alike throughout. 

This inveterate persistency of species in 
ghost-stories appears rather curiously in a 
letter of the younger Pliny to his friend Sura, 
containing three stories of three still well- 
marked types : a premonitory vision, a haunted 
house, and a " poltergeist." Of these the 
first, about Curtius Rufus, an eminent public 
man, is also told, more briefly, by Pliny's 
friend Tacitus in the eleventh book of his 
Annals. The second has the most orthodox 
features of conventional fiction. A commo- 
dious residence in Athens had long stood 
empty, its tenants routed by the nightly 
visits of a spectral old man of extremely 
emaciated and squalid appearance, with long 
beard and dishevelled hair, rattling the chains 
on his feet and hands, who so alarmed the 
beholders that some of them died. The 
187 



188 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

philosopher Athenodorus, seeing the house 
for sale on extraordinarily low terms, resolved 
to investigate the spectre and took up his 
abode there — a pioneer among psychical 
researchers. As he sat alone at midnight, 
the inevitable ghost appeared, and with 
beckoning hand and clanking chains led him 
to a place in the area of the house, where it 
vanished. Marking the place, Athenodorus 
next day induced the magistrates to order 
excavations, which disclosed a fettered 
skeleton. Whereupon the bones being 
publicly interred, with propitiatory rites, the 
house was haunted no more ! In conclusion, 
Pliny begs his friend to consider the subject 
carefully; "and though," he adds, "you 
should as usual balance between two opinions, 
yet I hope that you will lean more to one side 
than the other, lest you should dismiss me in 
the same suspense and indecision that occa- 
sions you the present application." Pliny 
was neither the first nor the last of puzzled 
psychical researchers. 

A century later, Lucian, in his PhilopseudSs, 
characteristically ridicules a similar story 
about a house in Corinth. The poltergeist 
related by Pliny was of a very simple type, 
merely an account of how " supernatural " 
visitants cut off the hair of certain of Pliny's 
servants, when they were asleep, and strewed 
it about the room. 

Ancient and widespread as is the belief 
in hauntings, the evidence for the most part 
is open to suspicion, hence few educated 



HAUNTINGS AND POLTERGEISTS 189 

persons have been disposed to accept a 
supernormal origin for the stories, believing 
that some simple explanation would be found 
to cover the ground, such as rats, or owls, or 
practical joking. The subject cannot, how- 
ever, be so easily dismissed, for the careful 
investigations made by the S.P.R. have shown 
that amid much that is absurd and exaggerated 
certain cases remain which cannot be explained 
away by illusion or practical jokes. At the 
same time we rarely find anything corre- 
sponding to the traditional ghost-story, like 
that of Pliny, which connects some tragedy 
in a particular house or place, with the vague 
and often confused accounts of sights or 
sounds which perplex or terrify the observer. 
We often wonder why the numerous cases care- 
fully investigated by the S.P.R. and recorded 
in its publications have not been used by 
writers to furnish the mystery-loving public 
with ghost-stories more in accordance with fact. 
Here, for instance, is a remarkable case, 
which has stood the test of long and search- 
ing inquiry. The account was first received 
in 1884 through Mr. J. W. Graham, Principal 
of Dalton Hall, Manchester, and the case 
subsequently investigated by Mr. Myers. To 
avoid injury to the owner of the house the 
locality is not stated, and also the name 
" Morton " is substituted for the real family 
name, but the initials are the true ones. Miss 
" Morton " — a brief outline of whose account is 
given below — is a lady of scientific training 
and an exceptionally good witness. 



190 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

" In April 1882 Captain Morton and his 
family moved into a detached house at the 
corner of two cross roads, with a lawn and a 
short carriage-drive in front, and a garden 
and small orchard at the back. It was built 
in 1860, and occupied by Mr. S. and his family 
for sixteen years. His wife died there one 
August (year uncertain), whereupon Mr. S. 
took to drink, and when, two years afterwards, 
he married again his second wife contracted 
the same habit. They quarrelled continually, 
and a few months before his death, which 
occurred in July 1876, she left him, and lived 
at Clifton, till, in September 1878, she died 
of dipsomania, and was buried about a quarter 
of a mile from the house in question. After 
Mr. S.'s death it was occupied for six months 
by Mr. L. and his family. He died there, 
and it then remained empty for about four 
years, during which time the grounds are said 
to have been haunted by the figure of a lady, 
but the Mortons had heard no rumours. 
From June 1882 until 1889 there was fre- 
quently seen moving about within and with- 
out the house, by day and night, the appari- 
tion of a tall lady in widow's weeds, holding 
a handkerchief to her face, and seemingly 
weeping. The figure was believed to resemble 
the second Mrs. S., but in what degree the 
concealment of the face makes doubtful. 
It often went into the drawing-room, taking 
up a position in a window, where the second 
Mrs. S. used to sit, 

The wraith was first, and most frequently, 



HAUNTINGS AND POLTERGEISTS 191 

seen by the eldest Miss M., who followed it, 
spoke to it, when it would stop as if about to 
speak, but never did so; tried to touch it, 
but found it elude her grasp, vanishing when 
cornered, though in full view a moment before. 
Then with scientific care, she tested its 
immateriality by stretching lightly across 
the stairs fine threads, at various heights from 
the ground ; twice, at least, she saw the figure 
pass through the threads, yet its passage left 
them undisturbed. Its footsteps were faintly 
audible. Later on it was seen by Miss M.'s 
sisters and brother, to whom she had not 
mentioned it, and by visitors and servants, 
in all about twenty persons. Neither her 
father nor her mother, who was an invalid, 
ever saw it. Miss M. sometimes saw it when 
other persons present did not. It often 
vanished at a door leading into the garden. 
Once it was seen by Miss M. and her sister to 
pass from the drawing-room along the passage, 
and disappear at this door, while their sister E., 
coming in from the garden, said she had seen 
it emerge from the steps outside : the three 
sisters then went into the garden, when afourth 
sister called from an upper window that she 
had just seen it pass across the front lawn and 
along the carriage-drive to the orchard. This 
is a noticeable feature in the case, since it 
seems probable that the figure was traced by 
independent observers through the successive 
points in space which a material body would 
have occupied in going from the drawing- 
room to the orchard; and this, prima facie, 



192 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

implies some spatial relations. Mrs. Sidgwick 
observes (Proc. S.P.R., vol. hi., p. 146) that, 
in the absence of accurate notes of the time, 
we cannot be certain that the appearances 
were successive, or in the order assumed, as 
a phantom might possibly appear in several 
places at once — which is doubtless true; but 
we seem to have no records of such an 
occurrence. 

The figure was seen most frequently in the 
months of July, August and September, 
which include the anniversaries of the deaths 
of Mr. S. and his wives. The frequency was 
at its maximum in the summer of 1884, after 
which time the appearances became fewer, 
and finally ceased in 1889. Towards the 
end of this period, the figure, which had at 
first looked life-like and substantial, became 
shadowy and semi-transparent. There was also 
a gradual cessation of the phenomena which 
had occurred during these years, namely 
footsteps, soft and slow — unlike those of any 
in the house, — thumps on bedroom doors and 
turning of the door-handles, sounds of the drag- 
ging about of heavy weights, and unaccountable 
lights. 

Miss M., who investigated the apparition 
quite fearlessly, describes herself as having 
had at first " a feeling of awe, as at something 
unknown, mixed with a strong desire to know 
more about it." Subsequently she became 
conscious of a feeling of loss, as if she had 
" lost power to the figure." Most of the other 
percipients were greatly alarmed, and felt 



HAUNTINGS AND POLTERGEISTS 193 

chilled as if by a cold wind. Two dogs in the 
house were at times much terrified. Full de- 
tails of this case, which Mr. Myers considered 
" in some respects one of the most remarkable 
and best authenticated instances of ' haunt- 
ing' on record," will be found in the S.P.R. 
Proceedings, vol. viii. Mr. Myers took much 
trouble in the investigation of this case, 
personally examined several of the witnesses, 
and was convinced of the genuineness of the 
whole story, which, however, loses much of its 
impressiveness in the brief summary which is 
all that it is possible to give in these pages. 

A remarkable case of haunting occurred 
some years ago in a manor-house in the mid- 
land counties of England. I was invited to 
investigate the case and was offered hospitality. 
'Though the ghost did not appear to me, whilst 
I slept in the haunted room, yet I heard certain 
mysterious knockings and some other dis- 
turbances which accompanied it; nor could 
I find any satisfactory explanation of these 
sounds. The first-hand evidence on behalf 
of the ghostly figure was, however, abundant 
and surprising. It was seen in the house 
independently by nearly a dozen different 
persons, who at first believing it to be a 
practical joke, tried to catch it, but it was 
uncatchable and impalpable; the latter was 
proved by a young officer, who when staying 
in the house saw the phantom one night, rose 
from his bed, followed it and shot through 
the figure, which moved on unconcerned. The 
children of my host, from whom the story of 



194 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

the ghost had been carefully concealed, 
described the same figure, which did not 
frighten, but rather amused, them, as they 
said " they could see the wall of the school- 
room through its body." 

Another case of haunting investigated by 
myself and also by Professor Sidgwick, 
occurred not far from my own residence in 
Kingstown. Here the phantom of a woman 
wrapped in a grey shawl was seen on the stairs 
and in a particular bedroom of a house tenanted 
by a lady and her brother. The figure was 
seen by different occupants of the room and by 
a child of five years old, though none were 
previously aware of the ghostly visitant : the 
door of the room was locked, yet still the figure 
made its appearance to the occupier of the 
room. All attempts at a normal explanation 
failed and the occupiers had at last to leave 
the house. Subsequently it was found that 
some previous tenants of the house had been 
troubled by inexplicable disturbances of vari- 
ous kinds, details of which they gave. (Proc. 
S.P.R., vol. ii., p. 141.) 

In all these cases one is naturally very 
sceptical that really similar phantoms have 
been seen quite independently. Even if the 
ghost be actually seen by the investigator, it 
is easier to assume that the figure is a pure 
hallucination, or some real person playing a 
trick. I confess, however, that a careful con- 
sideration of first-hand evidence has led me to 
the same conclusion at which Mrs. Sidgwick, 
one of the most critical and able of investi- 



HAUNTINGS AND POLTERGEISTS 195 

gators, arrived so far back as 1885, namely, 
that in spite of all reasonable scepticism, it 
is difficult " to avoid accepting, at least pro- 
visionally, the conclusion that there are, in a 
certain sense, haunted houses, i. e. that there 
are houses in which similar quasi-human 
apparitions have occurred at different times 
to different inhabitants, under circumstances 
which exclude the hypothesis of suggestion or 
expectation" (Proc. S.P.R., vol. iii., p. 142). 

Here is a typical case of haunting, resting 
on the evidence of educated persons who tried 
in vain to account for what was seen : full 
details are given in the Journal of theS.P.R., 
vols. vi. and ix. In 1892, Miss Scott, living 
at St. Boswells, Roxburghshire, upon walking 
home one afternoon in May, saw a tall man 
dressed in black a few yards in front of her. 
He turned a corner of the road, being still in 
view when he suddenly disappeared, although 
no exit seemed possible. Hurrying on to find 
what had become of him she met her sister, 
who was looking round bewildered; she too 
had seen the same figure, whom she took to 
be a clergyman, but the figure suddenly van- 
ished and search yielded no clue. 

In the July following, at the same place, 
Miss Scott again saw the same figure, the upper 
part of which was also seen by another sister 
who was walking with her; it was dressed 
like an old clergyman in knee-breeches, silk 
stockings, buckled shoes, white cravat and 
low-crowned hat. Resolved not to lose sight 
of him this time Miss Scott kept her eyes fixed 



196 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

on the figure, but both sisters saw it gradually 
fade away before their eyes. Again in June, 
the next year, Miss Scott, walking one morning 
near the same place, saw the same apparition. 
Determined to solve the mystery she rushed 
to overtake it, but it seemed to glide away in 
front of her, then it stopped, turned round and 
faced her, enabling her to note in minute detail 
the features and dress, that of a Scotch clergy- 
man of a century ago. Finally the figure again 
faded away by the roadside. 

Other persons also independently testified 
to having seen the same figure at the same 
place. One lady, Miss Irvine, was attracted 
by the quaint dress of the old clergyman, and 
watched him walking to and fro by the hedge- 
side, when, to her astonishment, the figure 
vanished when she was about three yards off. 
The various witnesses gave separate written 
and concordant reports of what they had seen. 
The figure was not further seen until 1897, 
when Miss Scott and one of her sisters again 
saw it, noting the thin white features and dress 
of the phantom ; they had not been thinking 
of it and are sure it was no morbid hallucina- 
tion or illusion of their senses, or practical 
joke. A plan was sent of the road and locality, 
with the positions marked where different 
persons had seen the apparition. In July 
1900 Miss Scott saw the figure again on two 
occasions near the same spot, and wrote an 
account to the S.P.R. the next day. Persons 
employed on that particular road have been 
interrogated, but have never seen the phantom, 



HAUNTINGS AND POLTERGEISTS 197 

nor has a man who passes up and down the road 
to the village every morning and evening. 

It is very difficult to believe Miss Scott and 
the other percipients were all mistaken, and 
it is equally difficult to frame any theory to 
account for the persistence of the phantom 
in this spot, except by the hypothesis given 
below. 

The case of the " haunted house at Willing- 
ton " has been a familiar theme on Tyneside 
for half a century, and accounts of it have 
appeared in various publications. The best 
report will be found in vol. v. of the Journal 
of the S.P.R., where Mr. J. Proctor, a member 
of the Society of Friends, who was born in 
the house, gives a vivid account of his ex- 
perience of the hauntings and of their wholly 
inexplicable character. 

Other cases might be quoted, which, like 
the two preceding ones, suggest that some 
kind of local imprint, on material structures 
or places, has been left by some past events 
occurring to certain persons, who, when on 
earth, lived or were closely connected with 
that particular locality ; an echo or phantom 
of these events becoming perceptible to those 
now living who happen to be endowed with 
some special psychic sensitiveness. Although 
this theory seems extravagant and incredible, 
there are not wanting analogies to it both in 
the domain of physics and psychical research. 
A coin left on a pane of glass and after some 
time removed, leaves a local imprint which 
may be revealed by breathing on the glass; 



198 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

pieces of wood, coal, and many other materials 
laid on a photographic plate and then removed, 
leave a " local imprint " so that the very 
structure of the materials is revealed when the 
plate is developed, it may be long after. The 
causes of these and other curious phenomena 
are now known, but this cannot be said of 
somewhat analogous phenomena in psychical 
research. 

Certain sensitives are said to be able to 
detect, or " psychometrize " as they call it, 
the influence left on material objects worn 
by an absent or deceased person. Whether 
this be the case or not, there are some startling 
and well-attested phenomena related by the 
older mesmerists which apparently indicate 
that some specific influence is left on a material 
object by the passes of a mesmerizer. The 
scientific objections to a specific effluence are 
perhaps not so formidable now that we are 
acquainted with certain physical and psychical 
facts that would have been deemed utterly 
incredible a century ago. 

In the early years of the S.P.R., Mr. Gurney 
was present with me when certain hypnotic 
experiments were made, in the rooms of the 
Society and under our direction. The results 
of these experiments seemed so incredible 
that I believe they were never published. 
Any particular book or coin or other object 
over which the hypnotizer had made a few 
passes, or even pointed his fingers, could be 
detected by a sensitive subject, who was 
subsequently brought by us into the room, 



HAUNTINGS AND POLTERGEISTS 199 

from which the hypnotizer had in the mean- 
while been excluded and the positions of the 
objects then changed by us. In fact, every 
precaution was taken to avoid collusion or 
any direct knowledge being gained by the 
subject, who was not entranced at the time. 
Finally, we were driven to telepathy as a 
possible explanation; but even this seemed 
unlikely, for our presence in the room made 
no difference, nor was any difference found 
when we did not know which object had been 
treated by the hj^pnotist. Here, as in many 
other problems of psychical research, we have 
no solution to offer, and must leave future 
investigators to confirm or disprove the results 
we obtained. 

To return to the subject of hauntings, 
different theories have been suggested — 

(1) The popular view that the apparition 
belongs to the external world like ordinary 
matter, and would be there whether the per- 
cipient was present or not. Some cases appear 
to support this view, such as the one to which 
I have already referred (p. 191), in which the 
phantom was followed from place to place and 
seen by different independent observers at 
successive points. This theory, however, has 
insuperable difficulties, among others that of 
accounting for the clothes of the ghost, and 
it may be dismissed. (2) That the phantom 
was projected from the mind of the percipient, 
and was, therefore, a hallucination; not a 
baseless one, but created by a telepathic 
impact from the mind of a deceased person. 



200 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

Here we have the difficulty of explaining why 
the phantasm should be dependent on a par- 
ticular locality, although with our present 
knowledge this theory appears the most 
plausible. (3) That the phantom was due 
merely to expectancy and telepathically 
transferred from one mind to another. This 
may account for some cases such as the two 
that will be cited immediately. (4) That some 
subtle physical influence is left in the building 
or locality which affects certain brains and 
creates the hallucination. This, Mrs. Sidgwick 
remarks, " one can hardly expect to appear 
plausible," albeit it corresponds best to a 
certain part of the evidence, and from what 
has been said on a previous page cannot be 
hastily rejected. To these we may add an 
extension of the second theory that hauntings 
are due to dreams of the deceased, telepathi- 
cally projecting scenes of their life on earth to 
some persons there present. Finally, those 
who have not made a study of the subject 
will have their own theory that all the alleged 
phenomena are due to delusion or fraud. 

A lively imagination stimulated by expect- 
ancy probably accounts for the two following 
cases. Early in 1911 a book entitled An 
Adventure was published in London, giving an 
account of the experiences of two ladies on 
visiting Versailles some ten years ago, when 
they appeared to be transported into the times 
of Marie Antoinette. On more than one visit 
they thought they saw the surroundings of 
the place and the people therein, as their 



HAUNTINGS AND POLTERGEISTS 201 

subsequent investigations showed might have 
been the case had they been present during 
the life of Marie Antoinette. This narrative, 
however, when examined for the S.P.R., 
appears to be based on slender evidence and 
trivial incidents, undesignedly amplified by 
the authors, and cannot be accepted as of 
any real evidential value. In some points it 
resembles a story of apparent obsession by 
Marie Antoinette, sent to the S.P.R. Journal 
by Mrs. Stapleton, and published in June 
1907, but the stories have no connection with 
one another. Both are instances of several 
dream romances inspired by the history of 
the ill-fated Queen, the best known of them 
being the case of Helene Smith, who regarded 
herself as a reincarnation of Marie Antoinette. 
This interesting romance of a " secondary 
personality " is described in an able book by 
Professor Flournoy, a summary of which is 
given by Mr. Myers in Human Personality, 
vol. ii., p. 130 et seq. 

The other case is as follows : About 9 p.m. 
on May 8, 1885, a gardener named Bard, 
returning from work, passed through Hinxton 
churchyard, in Essex, and thought he saw 
his former employer, Mrs. de Freville, leaning 
on the railings round her husband's tomb, five 
or six yards distant. He recognized her black 
mantle and poke-bonnet, and her face, which 
was paler than usual. He supposed her to be, 
as was her habit, visiting the tomb, and he 
kept his eye on her as he walked round the 
railings to see if the gate into the vault were 



202 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

open, but stumbled over a grass-tussock, 
and when he looked again the figure had 
disappeared. He found the gate locked, and 
could see her nowhere in the churchyard. 
Looking at the clock, he saw that it was 9.20. 
On reaching home, he told his wife, as she 
testifies, that he had seen Mrs. de Freville. 
On that afternoon, about seven hours earlier, 
Mrs. de Freville had died very suddenly in 
London, but this was unknown in Hinxton 
until the next day. This case, which was 
carefully investigated for the S.P.R., rests on 
strong evidence with respect to the character of 
the percipient, a highly intelligent and trust- 
worthy man, and the closeness of the coin- 
cidence. Its weak points are : (1) that he 
might have already heard of the death — this, 
however, is very improbable; (2) he saw the 
figure two hours after sunset on a moonless 
evening, when, unless there was unusually 
bright starlight, or an unusually prolonged 
after-glow, it must have been very dark; 
(3) he said himself that he half thought he 
had imagined it; (4) churchyards suggest 
fancies of the kind. 

The term "haunting '! is usually restricted to 
those cases where quasi-human phantoms are 
seen at different times by different persons in 
a particular locality. Neither the last case 
nor the next are hauntings in this sense, but 
the following is interesting theoretically, for 
the supposed ghost was alive at the time; 
this case rests upon excellent evidence. 

In December 1896, Mrs. Blaikie was staying 



HAUNTINGS AND POLTERGEISTS 203 

away from home in Edinburgh, where, on 
December 10, she fell ill with an attack of 
acute laryngitis. About 11 p.m. on December 
11, her three women servants were sitting by 
the kitchen fire in her house, when they heard 
steps exactly like hers coming from the hall 
towards the nursery door. They all went 
to the door leading from the kitchen to the 
nursery passage, but saw nothing. At the 
same time her daughter Frances, while un- 
dressing in her room, heard coming along the 
passage to the door footsteps heavy and rather 
quick, exactly like her mother's, and unlike 
any of the servants', though she supposed it 
must be one of them until they all came in 
alarm to ask if it had been she. The other 
daughter, Jeanie, in her room up-stairs, had 
also heard steps exactly like her mother's, 
but conjectured burglars; however, on the 
house being searched, nothing was found to 
account for the sounds. 

Mrs. Blaikie writes : " On the evening of 
December 11, about eleven o'clock, I had 
such a sensation of being suffocated that 
I felt as if I were dying, and would never see 
my home again. I was suddenly filled with 
an overpowering longing to be at home, and 
whether I fell asleep for a few moments and 
dreamed I do not know, but it seemed the 
next minute as if my desire was granted, and 
I felt I was actually there. I was conscious 
of walking along the passage past the dressing- 
room door, and towards the room we call the 
nursery, but I had hardly time to realize my 



'204 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

own joy and relief when I found myself still 
lying in bed, and the feeling of suffocation, 
from which I had had such a happy respite for 
a few moments, again tormenting me. When 
I returned home a week later I was told of the 
curious occurrence on the evening of Friday, 
the 11th" {Journal S.P.R., vol. viii., p. 320). 

How are we to account for this collective 
hallucination ? Had it some normal explana- 
tion, or was it a telepathic impression conveyed 
to one of the daughters, and did this start a 
similar impression on the other percipients, 
or was it simultaneously impressed on all ? 
We have no experimental evidence on behalf 
of either of these latter hypotheses. Mr. 
Myers, from this and several similar cases, 
was led to adopt the idea of a temporary 
excursion* of the spirit to the place where it 
desired to be, in some unknown way being 
able to make its presence perceptible. It 
is improbable that any physical instrument 
could detect and record the sounds heard, 
though the experiment is worth trying. 
Would a sensitive flame, for instance, which 
is affected by the feeblest sounds, have 
detected the footsteps or rustling of Mrs. 
Blaikie's phantasmal dress ? Would a photo- 
graphic plate record an apparition ? I am 
inclined to think not in either case. 

In passing, it may here be remarked 
that the evidence for so-called spirit photo- 
graphy is wholly inconclusive, most alleged 
cases are pure fraud. The impression in all 
phantasms, I believe, is made directly on 



HAUNTINGS AND POLTERGEISTS 205 

the mind of the percipients and not through 
their organs of hearing or sight. The mind 
then projects the impression outside itself, 
and hears sounds and sees visions apparently 
in external space. But why this particular 
impression ? Why should Mrs. Blaikie's spirit 
have been able to conjure up only the sound 
of her footsteps and the rustling of her dress ? 
Were the details of her presence fashioned by 
the transmitting or receiving mind, or by 
both ? Possibly the result was due to the 
subconscious and symbolical manner in which 
the personality of a friend is conceived, whose 
presence is suggested telepathically. But tele- 
pathy is only a provisional explanation, and 
is completely out of court in the still more 
puzzling phenomena of poltergeists, to which 
we must now turn. 



Poltergeists 

We have no exact English equivalent for 
the German word " Poltergeist," usually 
translated " hobgoblin " ; a " polterer " in 
German is a noisy or boisterous fellow, and a 
" poltergeist " is therefore a boisterous ghost. 
The phenomena are sporadic, breaking out 
suddenly in some place and disappearing after 
a few weeks or months of annoyance to those 
concerned. Unlike hauntings, the disturb- 
ances appear to gather round a particular, 
usually young, person in a particular place. 
All kinds of mischievous pranks are played, 
objects are thrown about, bells rung, furniture 



206 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

moved, noises made, all utterly meaningless. 
And the closest scrutiny fails, in genuine 
cases, to discover any conceivable explana- 
tion, except some unseen agency. 

Similar phenomena are recorded in different 
countries throughout the world, and go back 
to a remote period of time. No doubt in part 
they gave rise, as Mr. A. Lang suggests, to 
fetishism among savage races, i. e. a belief 
that an inanimate object may be tenanted by 
what is thought to be a spirit. One of the 
best-attested English cases of poltergeists 
occurred in 1661, and is known as the " Demon, 
or drummer, of Tedworth." This was 
minutely investigated and described by one 
of the most critical among the early Fellows 
of the Royal Society, the Rev. J. Glanvil, who 
published a full account of this case in his 
well-known book, Saducismus Triumphatus. 
Briefly, the facts are as follows. A Mr. 
Mompesson, a magistrate in Tedworth, Wilts, 
ordered the arrest of a vagrant drummer 
in 1661. Shortly afterwards at Mr. Mom- 
pesson's house began an amazing series of 
unaccountable noises and disturbances which 
continued for two years. The drummer was 
tried for witchcraft but acquitted, and the 
disturbances went on when he was far off in 
jail. The evidence as to these disturbances 
was given on oath at this trial and the eye- 
witnesses were numerous. Glanvil himself 
came to investigate, and relates that he saw 
chairs move about without any one touching 
them, shoes thrown by invisible hands, that 



HAUNTINGS AND POLTERGEISTS 207 

he heard scratchings on the bed, etc., all the 
phenomena apparently clustering round Mr. 
Mompesson's two young children. They were 
naturally suspected, but Glanvil relates how 
he convinced himself, as others had been con- 
vinced, that it was quite impossible for the 
children to have played these tricks, which 
often occurred in daylight before the eyes of 
numerous sceptical inquirers. 

Omitting many other similar cases in 
Scotland and different parts of England, we 
come to the famous case of the disturbances 
at Ep worth vicarage during the Rev. S. 
Wesley's residence there in 1716. These 
formed the subject of a long investigation and 
careful record by his son, John Wesley, the 
founder of Methodism, who came to the 
conclusion that their origin was " Satanic," 
a not unnatural conclusion as the following 
entries in the journal of Mr. Wesley, senr., 
show — 

" December 25. — The noises were so violent 
it was vain to think of going to sleep. Decem- 
ber 27. — They [the disturbances] were so 
boisterous I did not care to leave my family." 
Again he writes: " I have been thrice pushed 
by an invisible power, once against my desk 
in the study, a second time against the door 
of the matted chamber, a third against the 
frame of my study door as I was going in." 
Their mastiff seemed more afraid than the 
children, as it came whining to them when 
the disturbances arose. Southey, in his Life 
of Wesley, states that " the testimony . . * is 



208 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

far too strong to be set aside because of the 
strangeness of the relation." 

Then, in 1834, we have the remarkable case 
of '" Bealing bells," investigated and related 
by Major Moor, F.R.S. Here, day after day 
for nearly two months, the bells of the house 
were continually ringing in broad daylight, 
no known cause being discovered; the bell- 
wires were in full view and a careful watch 
kept, until at last Major Moor was thoroughly 
convinced the ringing was by no human 
agency; the inmates were driven from the 
house and the mystery never cleared up. 

Similar inexplicable cases of bell-ringing 
have occurred elsewhere. One such case, 
associated with other poltergeist phenomena, 
was critically investigated in Massachusetts 
in 1868. Not only were the bell-wires de- 
tached and the bells suspended near a lofty 
ceiling, but they continued to ring and were 
seen ringing in daylight whilst observers kept 
watch. The phenomena began after the 
arrival of a maidservant, who, of course, was 
suspected, but it was soon found impossible 
for her to be the culprit, as the bell-ringing and 
violent pitching about of furniture occurred 
when she was observed to be quietly at her 
work in another room. The investigation 
appears to have been a very thorough and 
careful one, yet no explanation could be 
found. 

Perhaps the most conclusive evidence for 
poltergeist phenomena is that given on oath 
in connection with Cideville parsonage, a 



HAUNTINGS AND POLTERGEISTS 209 

place some thirty miles from Havre. Here, 
in 1850-51, knockings, movements of furni- 
ture, noises of all kinds occurred in daylight, 
and every would-be exposer of the mystery 
was baffled. 

In 1877 I investigated a remarkable 
poltergeist occurring in an Irish farmer's 
cabin a few miles from Enniskillen. I was 
aided in the inquiry by two sceptical scientific 
friends, but we were all convinced that the 
phenomena could not be accounted for by 
any known agency. In an article published 
in the Dublin University Magazine for 1877, I 
gave a detailed account of these occurrences 
and the precautions taken to avoid the 
possibility of trickery. Here, in my presence, 
violent knockings and scratchings were heard, 
but the closest scrutiny on the part of three 
critical observers failed to account for them. 

More recently in Enniscorthy, a town in 
Co. Wexford, I have investigated a case of 
poltergeist that occurred in July 1910. Here 
the disturbances centred round a young 
carpenter, and, though they had ceased when 
I visited the spot, the testimony of various 
witnesses convinced me that it was practically 
impossible to attribute them to the lad or to 
any other human being. For two sceptical 
and intelligent investigators were present one 
night when unaccountable knockings and 
amazing disturbances took place. The bed- 
clothes were pulled off the bed on which the 
lad was sleeping, the bed itself was pulled into 
the middle of the room and the lad lifted off 



210 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

the bed and deposited gently on the floor. 
The light was sufficient to enable them to see 
that no practical jokes were being played. 
The reader who may be interested will find 
a full report of this and other cases in my 
paper on Poltergeists, in the Proceedings of the 
S.P.R., vol. xxv. In earlier volumes and in the 
Journal of that Society will be found other 
well-attested cases of poltergeist occurring in 
England and on the Continent. 

What are we to say to these mysterious and 
bizarre phenomena ? The witnesses had cer- 
tainly nothing to gain by narrating them, for, 
as Glanvil remarks of Mr. Mompesson, " he 
suffered in his name, his estate, and all his 
affairs, and in the general peace of his family 
and loss of his servants and of his health," 
through the occurrences. Fraud, mal-obser- 
vation, misdescription, illusion, etc., doubtless 
explain some cases, but are, in my opinion, 
inadequate to account for all the cases. 
Imitation of some of the phenomena by 
children and others may, and does sometimes, 
occur, but is likely to be, and indeed in some 
such cases has been, quickly detected. 

Confronted by these perplexing phenomena, 
all we can do is to continue collecting and 
sifting the evidence with scrupulous care, 
hoping that in time patient inquiry will 
throw some light on these investigations as 
it has done on some of the sporadic and 
puzzling phenomena of meteorology. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF SPIRITUALISM 

One of the objects which the Society for 
Psychical Research was founded to investigate 
is officially described as follows : " An Inquiry 
into various alleged phenomena apparently 
inexplicable by known laws of nature and 
commonly referred by Spiritualists to the 
agency of extra-terrene intelligences, and by 
others to some unknown physical force." 
These phenomena include the alleged move- 
ment of both light and heavy objects without 
known cause, responsive raps and other 
sounds, luminous appearances, the levitation 
of human beings, etc., etc. 

Whether such an inquiry is thought worthy 
of serious attention or not depends upon the 
degree of knowledge or amount of prejudice 
one happens to possess. The question to be 
considered is not any particular theory as to 
the origin of these phenomena, but whether 
they are really supernormal, or an exhibition 
of credulity, ignorance and imposture. The 
repugnance with which the whole subject 
is widely regarded is very natural; for the 
alleged phenomena only occur in the presence 
211 



212 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

of a " medium " and usually in darkness ; 
moreover, a class of paid professional mediums 
has arisen, several of whom — a particularly 
detestable class of rogues — have been caught 
in barefaced trickery. The necessity for a 
medium need not concern us; some inter- 
mediary, animate or inanimate, between the 
seen and unseen is requisite in the physical 
as well as in the psychical world, as remarked 
earlier, whenever unseen agencies are rendered 
perceptible to the senses. What peculiar 
psychological state constitutes a medium we 
have not the remotest idea ; sex, age, and 
education are alike immaterial. In other 
departments of psychical research no injurious 
effect on the psychic or medium, so far as I 
know, has ever been observed; here, however, 
there seems to be in many cases a deteriorating 
influence as incomprehensible as that which 
sometimes occurs among " horsey " people. 
But we don't blame the horse or reject its 
services on this account, and we have no right 
to exclude from scientific inquiry any subject 
because it appears repellent from its associa- 
tions. The dogmatic refusal to listen to 
evidence is no less reprehensible than the 
temper of uncritical acceptance of these 
phenomena by many spiritualists. 

Two conditions are obviously essential for 
any satisfactory investigation of these pheno- 
mena. One is the presence of good light for 
observation, and the other the absence of any 
pecuniary motive on the part of the medium ; 
even so the love of notoriety often affords as 



PHYSICAL PHENOMENA 213 

strong a motive as the love of money — of this 
I could relate more than one instance in the 
course of my inquiries. Hence the difficulty 
which many on the Council of the Society 
for Ps}^chical Research have experienced in 
arriving at any definite conclusions in this 
obscure region, inasmuch as the requisite 
conditions are not often attainable. But 
throughout psychical research we invariably 
find that phenomena which have been alleged to 
occur experimentally, are paralleled if genuine 
by similar phenomena which occur spontane- 
ously and sporadically. Now the undeniable 
evidence (in my opinion) on behalf of polter- 
geists affords ground for belief in similar 
phenomena occurring experimentally. Rap- 
pings, disturbances of all kinds, the movement 
of objects without contact, etc., have in fact 
taken place, as testified by many observers, 
without the presence of a paid medium, 
sometimes in good light and with every 
precaution which ingenuity could suggest to 
prevent trickery. 

On the other hand, the Society for Psychical 
Research have shown that mal-observation 
accounts for many of the marvels attested by 
good witnesses. The attention is so easily 
diverted that an investigator may honestly 
believe he kept his eyes continuously fixed 
on the medium, when actually he did nothing 
of the kind. This, however, assumes that 
the medium, intentionally or otherwise, was 
able to take advantage of movements when 
the attention of the investigator was relaxed. 



214 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

Moreover, the long series of experiments which 
Sir W. Crookes made with the medium, Mr. 
D. Home, under stringent test conditions, 
when he obtained the most amazing pheno- 
mena, demonstrates either that the occur- 
rences actually took place, or that Sir William 
was the victim of hallucination. This latter 
explanation is plausible, and was indeed 
adopted for some time by myself, but personal 
acquaintance with the phenomena convinced 
me it was quite inadequate. The limits of space 
will only allow me to give a brief reference 
to a fragment of my own experience; for 
further information on this long-disputed 
subject the reader should consult various 
papers on both sides by Mrs. Sidgwick, Mr. 
Myers, Dr. Hodgson, Sir W. Crookes, myself, 
and others, published in the Proceedings of 
the S.P.R. (see vols, iv., vi., vii., ix., etc.), or 
the new edition of my book entitled On the 
Threshold of a New World of Thought. 

When a sceptic as to the reality of these 
physical or telekinetic phenomena, it so hap- 
pened that I was able to investigate some 
inexplicable rappings and movement of 
objects that occurred in the presence of a 
child, the daughter of an acquaintance who 
was residing for the season in a house near 
my own. Here the occurrences took place 
in broad daylight, frequently with no one 
present but myself and the child, and I sought 
in vain for some normal explanation. Vigor- 
ous raps, which had an intelligent origin — ■ 
for upon pointing to the letters of the 



PHYSICAL PHENOMENA 215 

alphabet they spelt out answers to questions 
— came on the table, on the back of my chair 
and sometimes in a far distant part of the 
room. Even when I asked the young medium 
to lie on the sofa and firmly held her hands and 
feet, no other person being present, the raps 
came as before, and upon repeating the alpha- 
bet aloud, a rap at particular letters answered 
any question I put. The answers were such 
as the child would give, and the misspelling 
of words corresponded to those made by the 
young medium, as afterwards was ascertained. 
Nevertheless, I am perfectly certain that she 
could not have produced the sounds, nor 
could she have lifted the heavy mahogany 
dining-table, which sometimes rose some six 
inches with only one leg resting on the floor, 
and this in full sunlight, with our hands gently 
resting on the top and in view the whole time. 
Nor was I the victim of hallucination, for 
on the numerous occasions wherein I tested 
every plausible explanation, this hypothesis 
was always in my mind and was completely 
discredited. The child's music-master in- 
formed me that raps, often very loud, would 
come inside the piano when his pupil was 
practising and grew listless ; they came on a 
garden seat in the lawn and on an umbrella 
handle, whenever the young medium was near. 
After a few years the annoyance faded away, 
to the relief of all concerned. 

Some time subsequently I had the oppor- 
tunity of some sittings with the niece of a well- 
known photographer, when even more remark- 



216 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

able and unaccountable phenomena occurred* 
I will only mention one incident. The room 
was brightly lighted with gas, and after sundry 
raps had spelt out a message, a small table, 
untouched by any one, came hobbling across 
the room towards me until it imprisoned me 
in the arm-chair on which I was sitting. There 
were no threads or wires or any known cause 
for the movement of the table, nor for other 
movement of objects witnessed by me in 
excellent light. 

But these marvels are slight compared to 
the amazing phenomena recorded by Sir W. 
Crookes during his investigations with Home 
and another medium. It is needless to detail 
the facts, as they are generally known, and 
incredible as they appear, Sir W. Crookes is 
far too skilled and accurate an observer to 
allow any doubt as to the precautions he took 
to avoid fraud. In fact, all the phenomena 
took place in his own house, and many of the 
more startling occurrences under the blaze 
of an electric light. As some persons were 
under the impression that his conviction of the 
supernormal character of these manifestations 
had been shaken, Sir William Crookes in his 
presidential address to the British Association 
in 1898 stated that was not the case, and that 
he adhered to the statements he had published. 
Although Home has been accused of fraud, 
Mr. Myers and myself could obtain no evidence 
in support of this charge. We published a 
joint paper in the Journal of the S.P.R. for 
July 1889, giving the result of our investiga- 



PHYSICAL PHENOMENA 217 

tions and a summary of some of the astonish- 
ing phenomena attested by excellent witnesses. 

Here, for instance, is the testimony of a 
well-known lawyer, the late Mr. W. M. 
Wilkinson, which he sent to us. He states 
that in the winter of 1869 " I saw Mr. Home 
take out of our drawing-room fire a red-hot coal 
a little smaller than a cricket-ball and carry 
it up and down the room. He said to Lord 
Adare, now Earl Dunraven, who was present, 
' Will you take it from me, it will not hurt 
you.' Lord Adare took it from him and 
held it in his hand for about half a minute. 
Before he threw it in the fire, I put my hand 
close to it and felt the heat like that of a live 
coal." This handling of white-hot bodies 
with impunity by Home has been described 
to me by several eye-witnesses. Lord Craw- 
ford also saw it done on eight occasions; 
Sir W. Crookes saw it, and states no known 
chemical preparation (had Home used any) 
could have preserved the skin from injury, 
and yet there was no sign of burning. 
Another phenomenon, that of levitation, was 
witnessed by several good observers. In 
past time, the handling of fire and walking 
through the fire, and the levitation of the 
body have been recorded of many persons 
in many parts of the world. 

What can be said of these miracles ? They 
are so foreign to ordinary experience, that even 
the testimony of numerous and distinguished 
witnesses fails to carry conviction to the 
majority of readers. And yet it is impossible 



218 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

to reject the evidence, and it seems incon- 
ceivable that so many critical and sceptical 
observers were all mistaken or the victims of 
hallucination. For I might quote scientific 
men, trained observers, throughout the Con- 
tinent and America as well as in England, 
who after long and patient inquiry have been 
driven to a belief in the genuineness of the 
phenomena, the explanation of which all agree 
must be found in some department of know- 
ledge new to science. Professors Richet, 
Lombroso, Morselli, and other physiologists 
and psychologists of note; Professor Schia- 
perelli, Sir Oliver Lodge, Dr. A. R. Wallace, 
and many other famous men, including others 
of a past generation like that great exposer 
of humbugs, Professor De Morgan, — all unite 
in giving their testimony to the reality of 
some of these telekinetic phenomena. 

If, as all religions assume, life exists in the 
unseen, creatures of varied type and capacity 
may exist there as well as here ; some may be 
able to act upon material objects and even 
on the molecules themselves. It is true that 
the things done appear trivial, meaningless 
and incomprehensible from our present point 
of view. But as a great savant has remarked, 
" Only in proportion to the difficulty there 
seems of admitting the facts should be the 
scrupulous attention we bestow on their 
examination." That is now being done, and 
with that we must pass from this branch of 
our subject. 



CHAPTER XV 

AUTOMATIC WRITING 
CROSS-CORRESPONDENCE 

We must now pass on to the phenomena 
of the messages, spoken or written, which 
appear to be delivered involuntarily and 
automatically, and which are a fruitful 
though difficult branch of our inquiry. The 
main source, indeed, of the most remarkable 
evidence recently obtained has been auto- 
matic writing, in conjunction, at times, with 
automatic speech. This curious faculty, 
commonly possessed by those who are en- 
dowed with any " mediumistic " gifts, may 
be said to manifest itself in an extremely 
rudimentary form whenever anybody takes 
a pencil and scribbles on a scrap of paper, 
while thinking about something else. With 
some persons who have had the patience to 
sit regularly, and as passively as possible, 
the product varies in value from meaningless 
scrawls to messages which purport to be the 
words of an intelligence other than the writer's. 
Much care and patience, however, are re- 
quired in sifting the messages so received; 
219 



220 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

for even when we are convinced that a cer- 
tain message, or fragment of it, is not attri- 
butable to the conscious self of the writer, 
nor to telepathy from some living person, 
it may come from some deeper stratum, the 
subliminal self of the writer's own personality. 

Still, abundant evidence, dating from very 
ancient times to our own, shows that messages 
have been thus received, with contents 
attesting their supernormal origin/ Some- 
times one comes to the recipient as a single 
experience, never repeated; sometimes such 
communications seem to haunt a place or 
a person, described then respectively as an 
oracle and a medium, though to the presence 
of a medium the phenomena are no doubt 
in both cases really due, a fact which may be 
inferred from the cessation of oracles, and 
the persistence of mediums. In earlier days 
when facilities for writing were fewer than 
now, these communications usually took the 
form of voices, as they did many centuries 
since with Joan of Arc, and yet farther back 
with Socrates, historic cases, the psycho- 
logical problems presented by which owe 
to Mr. F. W. H. Myers their only adequate 
exposition. 

Socrates, eminently shrewd and sane, tells 
us that he was guided in the affairs and crises 
of his life by a warning voice — " the demon 
of Socrates " ; and even if these monitions 
were, for the most part, such as his own 
wiser self might possibly have given, this 
could hardly be said of the unlettered Maid 



AUTOMATIC WRITING 221 

of Orleans, whose " voices " gave her counsels 
transcending any act of her conscious reason. 
To call them intuitions does not explain their 
origin, and as little as the monitions of 
Socrates can they be classed as signs of 
incipient madness. "To be sane," as Mr. 
Myers says, " is to be adjusted to our en- 
vironment, to be capable of coping with the 
facts around us. Tried by this test, it is 
Socrates and Joan who should be our types 
of sanity." 

Our limits will not allow us to sketch, 
however briefly, the ancient and modern 
history of this faculty. It was never more 
abundantly manifested than at the present 
time, though no written report of its investi- 
gation, still less this brief summary of a 
fragment of the evidence, can convey the im- 
pression produced on all who have had long 
personal experience in this branch of inquiry. 

Forty years ago my attention was drawn to 
this subject by the perusal of numerous MS. 
books containing automatic writing, which 
came unbidden through the hand of a per- 
sonal friend, a lady well known in the educa- 
tional and philanthropic world of London for 
the high capacity and sobriety of judgment 
she brought to bear on the various Boards of 
which she was an esteemed member. These 
MS. books contained handwriting, sentiments, 
and modes of expression unlike those of my 
friend, as she was known to us all, while, amid 
much irrelevant verbosity, information un- 
known to the automatist was occasionally 



222 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

given, proving on inquiry to be correct. The 
writing was frequently interrupted by the 
invasion of other influences, some of a lower 
type and wholly alien to the character of my 
friend. 

I might quote many instances of automatic 
writing and drawing which have occurred 
more recently among my acquaintances. One, 
the wife of a late eminent colonial Lord Chief 
Justice, had a strange experience : though in 
her normal state quite unable to draw, her 
hand, when allowed to remain passive, rapidly 
sketched in the twilight most exquisite faces, 
which she completely failed to imitate by 
conscious volition. Another, the aged mother 
of a famous dramatic author, though also in 
her normal state quite incapable of drawing 
a line, involuntarily sketched fantastic and 
intricate foliage, with a precision and skill 
possible only to a gifted artist. 

But the most remarkable series of automatic 
scripts, which drew public attention to the 
whole subject, came through the hand of the 
late Rev. W. Stainton Moses, M.A., who for 
twenty years was an able and much-respected 
master in London University College School ; 
he was a Vice-President of the S.P.R. at 
its foundation, and intimately known to me. 
The writings, continued from 1873 to 1883, 
coming through an Oxford M.A., known for 
his high integrity and sound judgment, are of 
great value, enhanced by the more recent 
evidence obtained for alleged spirit control. 
The twenty-four lengthy note-books of auto- 



AUTOMATIC WRITING 223 

matic script left by Mr. Moses, and partially- 
published by him, were carefully and criti- 
cally examined by Mr. M) r ers, who has given 
a detailed analysis of them in vols. ix. and xi. 
of the S.P.R. Proceedings, and in vol. ii. of 
his work on Human Personality. 

The caligraphy of these scripts, unlike Mr. 
Moses' own large, thick, and rapid writing, 
was said to be fine, minute, regular, and 
beautiful. He tells us that to avoid as far 
as possible the influence of his own conscious 
thoughts on the writing, he occupied himself 
with other subjects, even reading abstruse 
books, and following a chain of close reason- 
ing, all the time that his hand was writing long, 
elaborate messages, given without a single 
correction, with great vigour and beauty of 
style. He never could command the writing : 
it came unsought, a sudden, irresistible power 
impelling him to write, and sometimes indeed 
causing him to fall into a trance, when he 
spoke under " control " words of which he had 
no recollection on returning to his normal state. 

The nature and effect of his automatic 
writings, and the teaching they inculcated, 
convinced Mr. Moses that he was merely the 
amanuensis of the lofty, discarnate spirits 
from whom they purported to come; and the 
result was a profound change in his whole 
spiritual outlook, the life of the unseen world 
becoming to him an ever-present and vivid 
reality. 

Nevertheless, were there no further evidence 
than this, these writings might conceivably 



224 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

be produced by his own subliminal self; but 
there is evidence in Mr. Moses' script of super- 
normal knowledge. In three cases he had 
distinct prevision of a death before the news 
was generally known. One was the death 
of President Garfield twelve hours before even 
a rumour of it had reached England. Another 
was that of a man who threw himself under 
a steam-roller in Baker Street, London. A 
former member of the S.P.R. Council, well 
known to me, was with Mr. Moses at the time, 
and has narrated the whole occurrence. Mr. 
Moses' hand suddenly drew a rough sketch 
of some horsed vehicle, and then wrote : "I 
killed myself to-day, Baker Street ; " after 
which, passing into a trance, Mr. Moses, 
greatly agitated, said : " Yes, yes, killed myself 
to-day under a steam-roller — yes, yes, killed 
myself." No one present knew what this 
meant, but later on, an evening paper related 
that a cabman had that day committed suicide 
in Baker Street by throwing himself under a 
steam-roller. 

Perhaps the most remarkable of these com- 
munications was that purporting to be from 
a lady who died on a Sunday in a country 
house two hundred miles from London,the tele- 
graphed announcement of her death appearing 
in Monday's Times. Mr. Moses had once met 
this lady and her husband at a seance, but 
knew nothing about her, or of her illness and 
death. On this Sunday night, in his North 
London lodgings, his hand wrote an announce- 
ment of her death; and a few days later she 



AUTOMATIC WRITING 225 

purported to write herself, saying that the 
handwriting was like her own, as evidence of 
her identity. There is no reason to believe 
that Mr. Moses had ever seen this lady's 
handwriting. On receiving other messages, 
which contained private matters relative to 
her, Mr. Moses gummed down these pages of 
his MS. book, marking it outside " private 
matter," and mentioned them to no one. 
On Mr. Moses' death, years afterwards, Mr. 
Myers, authorized by the executors, opened 
the pages, and to his surprise found that the 
communications were from a lady whom he had 
known, and with whom he had corresponded. 
The handwriting in the script was considered 
on comparison by Mr. Myers, her son, and 
an expert, to resemble unmistakably that of 
her own letters, and the contents of the 
communication were characteristic ; a curious 
sequence of coincidences thus leading to the 
verification of the case. 

During some years past the Society for 
Psychical Research has devoted much atten- 
tion to a number of automatic writers, 
including, among others, Mrs. Piper, Mrs. 
Verrall and her daughter, Mrs. Holland, 
Mrs. Forbes, and Mrs. Willett. Why ladies 
more than men should have these psychical 
gifts we do not know; certainly not one of 
the ladies named could be classed as an hysteri- 
cal or romancing person. The reason may 
perhaps be that they have, as a rule, more 
leisure in which to cultivate gifts of the kind. 
From its long standing, and the thoroughness 

H 



226 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

with which it has been studied, as well as 
from the extraordinary nature of the pheno- 
mena, Mrs. Piper's case derives a peculiar 
interest and importance. It differs from 
those of the other automatists mentioned 
in the circumstance that her writing is done 
during a trance, whereas theirs is produced 
almost invariably without even a momentary 
loss of consciousness, though signs are not 
wanting that the trance-state, if encouraged, 
might readily supervene. 

Mrs. Piper's trance-communications used 
formerly to be made by word of mouth, 
while she was " controlled," or possessed, by 
what claimed to be the spirit of a Franco- 
American doctor named Phinuit, a life-like and 
vivacious character, whom we cannot easily 
imagine to be, as some people have suspected, 
nothing more substantial than a secondary 
personality of Mrs. Piper herself. Be this as 
it may, however, many sitters have received 
through him what they felt justified in accept- 
ing as proofs of the continued existence of 
their departed friends. Nowadays Mrs. Piper 
writes instead of speaking, while she lies 
entranced, but her sitters talk to the writing 
hand, which replies in script, and these 
strangely conducted conversations have 
yielded much first-rate evidence. They pro- 
fess to be presided over by the band of soi- 
disant spirits who were formerly known as the 
" guides " of Stainton Moses, and who have 
superseded Phinuit, importing a somewhat 
perplexing element into the case, though the 



AUTOMATIC WRITING 227 

change has been on the whole decidedly for 
the better. It is, for instance, startling at 
first to learn that on one occasion two of 
them claimed to be respectively Homer and 
Ulysses, and often in the company of Tele- 
machus, while they all persistently comport 
themselves with ostentatious solemnity, dis- 
coursing in what Professor William James 
called " sacerdotal verbiage," mixed incon- 
gruously with slangy colloquialisms. 

Absurdities and inconsistencies such as 
these, however, belong merely to the trance's 
visionary setting or framework, which fits 
it naturally enough, since it certainly comes 
from somewhere in the region of dreams, 
that mysterious borderland lying unexplored 
between two worlds. And like in origin, no 
doubt, is the fantastic streak which so 
frequently runs through other automatic 
writings. Mrs. Verrall, for example, refers 
to "the few words of nonsense — sheer and 
absolute nonsense — which often seem re- 
quisite before the script can get under 
way." 

Through the above-mentioned group of 
automatists it is that the recent very remark- 
able evidence bearing on the continued 
existence of human life after bodily death 
has for the most part been received, in mes- 
sages which purport to come from Henry 
Sidgwick and Frederic Myers, together with 
their friends and fellow-workers Edmund 
Gurney and Richard Hodgson, who departed 
this life in 1888 and 1905. In the evidence 

H 2 



228 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

thus obtained, the new and noteworthy 
feature is what the investigators of the 
phenomena have called cross-correspondence, 
the beginning of which, a complicated bit of 
history, we can only briefly outline here, 
referring the reader for details to the very 
full account given in the Proceedings of the 
Society for Psychical Research, vols, xx.-xxv. 
It has not infrequently happened that 
references to the same topic have appeared 
simultaneously in the script of two automatic 
writers, a fact which might be — and therefore, 
in weighing evidence of this kind, is provision- 
ally — accounted for by thought-transference 
between them, even though they were on 
some occasions as far apart as England and 
India. But in 1906 Miss Johnson, an official 
of the Society, studying the scripts of Mrs. 
Verrall and Mrs. Holland, saw traces of 
attempts on the part of a control to produce 
a more complex sort of coincidence, by caus- 
ing a single statement to appear in two 
scripts, divided into fragments, unmeaning 
until put together, thus making telepathy 
seem a less adequate explanation. The group 
of controls, including Frederic Myers, by whom 
these scripts appear to be inspired, manifested 
themselves also in the trance-writings of 
Mrs. Piper, who at this time came from her 
home in Boston, Massachusetts, on a visit to 
England; and with a view to encouraging 
the production of even more elaborate and 
complex cross-correspondences, the following 
experiment was planned by members of the 



AUTOMATIC WRITING 229 

Society : A message, addressed to Frederic 
Myers, was written in Latin, and ostensibly 
communicated to him through the entranced 
Mrs. Piper, who has no knowledge of any 
ancient language. Its last clause ran : " Try 
to give to A and B [i. e. any two automatists] 
two different messages, between which no 
connection is discernible. Then as soon as 
possible give to C [a third automatist] a third 
message, which will reveal the hidden 
connection." 

In so far as the experiment had been 
designed to test the survival of classical 
scholarship, it proved a partial failure, for 
only a small portion of the message was ever 
actually translated by Mrs. Piper's control. 
But an answer immediately sent through 
other automatists seemed to imply an appre- 
hension of its object on the part of the soi- 
disant Frederic Myers, and it has led to a 
series of cross-correspondences, conforming to 
the type suggested, and successfully carried 
out with an ingenuity which in some cases 
draws upon stores of knowledge not possessed 
by the automatic writers through whom the 
messages are sent. It is a significant fact 
that evidence of this kind, the desirability 
of which had been pointed out by Frederic 
Myers in his earthly life, has begun to appear 
since his passing over, and not only so but 
the initiation of it apparently came from 
his side. 

Considered from an evidential point of 
view, these complex cross-correspondences, if 



230 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

their assumed meaning be confirmed, have 
a value which can hardly be over-estimated. 
They are so contrived that they seem to 
exclude the explanation by that telepathy 
from the living which a psychical researcher 
might appropriately describe as the " source 
of all my bliss and all my woe"; but while 
increasing the antecedent probability of sur- 
vival, conclusive proof of the fact, in any given 
instance, is made almost impossible, for the 
present, at least, when our ignorance can set 
no limits to the scope of telepathic powers. 

Furthermore, in her very interesting Report 
on Mrs. Holland's automatic writing (S.P.R. 
Proceedings, vol. xxi.), Miss Alice Johnson 
says, with reference to a view held by Dr. 
Leaf, that the evidence on the subject in- 
dicates a gradual disintegration of the spirit 
after death, on the analogy of the body's 
decay : "I venture to think that some of 
the evidence obtained since Dr. Leaf wrote 
[four or five years earlier] has a certain bear- 
ing on this argument. In these cross-corre-* 
spondences, we find apparently telepathy 
relating to the present — that is, the corre- 
sponding statements are approximately con- 
temporaneous — and to events in the present, 
which, to all intents and purposes, are un- 
known to any living person, since the meaning 
and point of her script is often uncompre- 
hended by each automatist, until the solution 
is found by putting the two scripts together. 
At the same time we have proof of what 
has occurred in the scripts themselves. Thus 



AUTOMATIC WRITING 231 

it seems as if this method is directed towards 
satisfying our evidential requirements. 

" There is no doubt that the cross-corre- 
spondences are a characteristic element in 
the scripts of Mrs. Verrall, Mrs. Forbes, Mrs. 
Holland, and still more recently, Mrs. Piper. 
And the important point is that the element 
is a new one. We have reason to believe 
. . . that the idea of making a statement 
in one script complementary of a statement in 
another had not occurred to Mr. Myers in 
his lifetime. . . . Neither did those who 
have been investigating automatic script 
since his death invent the plan, if plan there 
be. It was not the automatists who de- 
tected it, but a student of the scripts (Miss 
Alice Johnson); and it has every appearance 
of being an element imported from outside : 
it suggests an independent invention, an 
active intelligence constantly at work in the 
present, not a mere echo or remnant of 
individualities of the past." 

The earliest of the cross -correspondences 
recorded between the automatic scripts of 
Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Holland began towards 
the end of 1903, when the former was in 
Algeria and the latter in India. Several 
minor points of resemblance occur during 
this period in their scripts, and both of them 
refer to the approaching third anniversary 
of Mr. Myers' death, January 17, 1904. On 
that day they both wrote automatically, the 
script purporting to come from Mr. Myers, 
and each mentions a sealed envelope and a 



232 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

text. Mrs. Verrall wrote : " The question is 
answered . . . The text and answer are one, and 
are given; " and though the text actually 
given by Mrs. Holland was not this answer, it 
was one which had a special significance for 
Mrs. Verrall and Mr. Myers. Mrs. Holland 
wrote : "I am unable to make your hand 
form Greek characters, and so I cannot give 
the text as I wish, only the reference : 1 Cor. 
xvi. 13." This text is : "Watch ye; stand 
fast in the faith, quit you like men, be 
strong." " It is," Miss Alice Johnson writes 
(S.P.R. Proceedings, Part LV.), "the text 
inscribed, omitting the two last words, in 
Greek, over the gateway of Selwyn College, 
Cambridge, which would be passed in going 
from Mr. Myers' house to Mrs. VerralPs, or 
to the rooms in Newnham College where 
Professor and Mrs. Sidgwick lived. . . . The 
Greek inscription has an error in it — the 
omission of a mute letter — on which Mr. 
Myers had more than once remarked to Mrs. 
Verrall." But Mrs. Holland, who has never 
been in Cambridge, did not know that any 
such inscription existed, and was quite 
unaware that the text had any significance 
for Mrs. Verrall and her friends. 

Mrs. Holland's script of January 17, 1904, 
concluded with a message apparently ad- 
dressed to Sir Oliver Lodge, an old friend of 
Mr. Myers : " Dear old chap, you have done 
so much in the past three years — I am cog- 
nizant of a great deal of it, but with strange 
gaps in my knowledge. . . . There's so much to 



AUTOMATIC WRITING 233 

be learnt from the Diamond Island experi- 
ment ..." This refers to Diamond Island 
at the mouth of the Irrawaddy in Burma, 
where wireless telegraphy experiments, on the 
Lodge-Muirhead system, were then in progress. 
"The script," Miss Johnson writes (S.P.R. 
Proceedings, Part LXIIL), " is remarkably ap- 
propriate in several respects as a message to 
Sir Oliver Lodge. It was written on the third 
anniversary of Mr. Myers' death, which was 
also the end of Sir Oliver Lodge's three years' 
presidency of the S.P.R. I take the phrase — 
6 you have done so much in the past three 
years ' — to refer to this. The tone of affec- 
tionate intimacy running through the whole 
script is also especially appropriate. ... It is 
further significant that, as Sir Oliver Lodge 
tells me, Mr. Myers had been keenly interested 
in his work in wireless telegraphy ; and it was 
while with Mr. Myers, and stimulated by him, 
that he devised the fundamental plan for 
' tuning,' which in some form or another is 
necessarily used in all systems of wireless 
telegraphy, and was first patented by him in 
1897. The term ' syntony ' was invented 
for him by Mr. Myers and Dr. A. T. Myers. . . . 
While the script is thus thoroughly character- 
istic of the relation between Mr. Myers and 
Sir Oliver Lodge, the fact that it is connected 
in point of time with the first important cross- 
correspondence between Mrs. Holland and 
Mrs. Verrall — the ' Selwyn Text Incident ' — - 
seems to lend weight to the supposition that 
what we may call the ' Diamond Island 



234 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

script' may have been at least partially 
inspired by Mr. Myers." 

Mrs. Holland is doubtful whether at the 
time she wrote this script she knew that these 
experiments were being made; but she 
certainly knew nothing of the details, nor 
about the other circumstances, which gave 
appropriateness to the message. Neither 
the cross -correspondence nor the message to 
Sir Oliver Lodge was recognized by the 
readers of the script for some years after 
they were written, and the " control " in the 
meanwhile expressed much disappointment at 
his failure to make himself understood. 

On January 28, 1902, Dr. Hodgson had a 
sitting with Mrs. Piper in Boston, Massachu- 
setts, and when she was in the trance, sug- 
gested that her control should try to impress 
Miss Verrall at Cambridge in England with 
a certain scene or object. This being assented 
to, Dr. Hodgson said : " Can you try to make 
Miss Verrall see you holding a spear in your 
hand ? " The control answered : " Why a 
sphere ? " Dr. Hodgson repeated " spear " ; 
this was understood by the control, and the 
experiment promised during the week. At 
the next sitting, on February 4, the experi- 
ment with the sphear — so spelt in the trance 
script — was said to have been made with 
success. The confusion between " spear " 
and " sphere " evidently persisted in the mind 
of the medium, and the combination " sphear " 
resulted. 

Now, on January 31, 1902, intermediate, 



AUTOMATIC WRITING 235 

therefore, between these two sittings with Mrs. 
Piper in Boston, Mrs. Verrall suddenly felt 
impelled to write automatically whilst she was 
in London, and the script which resulted 
(written partly in Greek and partly in Latin) 
was interpreted by Mrs. Verrall at the 
time to mean : " the seeing of a sphere 
effected a mysterious ' co-reception,' " and 
the script associated this statement with the 
words volatile ferrum (flying iron) which Virgil 
uses to signify " spear." Mrs. Verrall states 
that in no previous automatic writing of hers 
had there been any reference to a spear, and 
the word " sphere " only once occurred some 
time before, in some very unintelligible 
script. Further, her writing in London on 
January 31 was signed with a Greek cross, 
which makes the connection between Mrs. 
Verrall's script and Mrs. Piper's still more 
striking, as the " control " then operating 
through Mrs. Piper always signed himself with 
a similar Greek cross. 

Here, quite apart from the good faith of 
Dr. Hodgson and Mrs. Verrall, we have the 
written record made on the two sides of the 
Atlantic. Dr. Hodgson, in fact, forwarded 
the report of this American sitting with 
suggested experiments to Mrs. Verrall, and 
it was received by her on February 13 — a 
fortnight after Mrs. Verrall had been controlled 
to write the sentence quoted. Mrs. Piper's 
controls, it may be observed, have a tendency 
not to distinguish between the scripts of Mrs. 
Verrall and her daughter. 



CHAPTER XVI 

automatic writing (continued), SURVIVAL 

AFTER DEATH 

Invaluable though it is, were no evidence 
forthcoming other than such mosaics of 
messages, with their cryptic language and 
allusions studiously veiled, until the disclosure 
of some missing word or phrase shall piece 
them together into an intelligible whole, we 
might indeed receive a discouraging and 
utterly erroneous impression that the manu- 
facture of puzzles and enigmas is the sole 
faculty and employment of discarnate spirits. 
But we have, of course, much other evidence, 
which, though attaining less completely to 
the rigorous standard demanded by Psychical 
Research — is quite strong enough to be 
considered by many unimpeachable, except on 
the hypothesis of terrene telepathy pushed to 
its very farthest limits. 

This evidence forms a most useful, in fact 
an indispensable supplement to that which 
aims primarily at elaborating conclusive 
proofs. It is given in communications of 
various kinds, professing to come from some 
discarnate spirit, and by their characteristic 
matter and manner creating an impression 
236 



AUTOMATIC WRITING 237 

that they really do so. The well -authenticated 
cases of such communications that have 
occurred during the last few years are far too 
numerous for recital here, even in the form 
of the barest catalogue. If we consider only 
the one particular little group of friends and 
colleagues who have so swiftly reassembled 
on the other side, we find instances many and 
impressive. Those who, like the present 
writer, were intimate with them have recog- 
nized repeatedly the familiar traits, material 
and trivial, habits of thought, and tricks of 
speech, that betoken a personality, or its vrai- 
semblance still existing, though contending 
with obstacles which forbid more than an 
incomplete expression. Such changes as are 
noted might spring naturally from the changed 
conditions of the communicators. Thus we 
learn that Frederic Myers has lost nothing 
of his intense concern about his comrades on 
their homeward way, but that what he now 
most eagerly desires is to assure them how 
" immortality, instead of being a beautiful 
dream, is the one, the only reality, the strong 
golden thread on which all the illusions of 
all the lives are strung." And, again, that 
Henry Sidgwick retains his propensity for 
awaiting results with scrupulous patience, 
though he has now, as well he may, added to 
patience a confident hope. A short account 
may be given here of an incident from which 
this appears, the rather as it involves two 
cross-correspondences of a not unmanageably 
complicated type. 



238 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

In Cambridge on February 9, 1906, Mrs. 
Verrall's automatic writing informed her that 
in Professor Henry Sidgwick's Memoir, which 
was shortly to be published, she would find 
two clues to the meaning of certain passages 
in her earlier script. The Memoir was pub- 
lished on February 27, and on the following 
day she found one of these clues, but noticed 
some inconsistencies whence she inferred a 
mistake in the passage concerned, the writer 
of which had purported to be Professor Sidg- 
wick. She at once mentioned this to Mrs. 
Sidgwick, and at the same time Mrs. Holland, 
away in the country, and unaware of what had 
happened, wrote automatically : " Henry (i. e. 
Professor Sidgwick) was not mistaken." 

Soon afterwards Mrs. Verrall found the 
second clue in a letter from Henry Sidgwick 
on the subject of immortality, in which he 
says : " On moral grounds, hope rather than 
certainty is fit for us in this earthly existence." 
The letter was addressed to his friend, Roden 
Noel, with whom neither Mrs. Verrall nor 
Mrs. Holland had been acquainted. Yet in 
her next automatic script, a few days after- 
wards, Mrs. Holland wrote, under the " con- 
trol " of Henry Sidgwick, the date of Roden 
Noel's death, twelve years before, and added 
the following passage, in which the senti- 
ments strongly resemble, with some appro- 
priate modifications, those of the letter to 
him wherein Mrs. Verrall had just found her 
clue : " We no more solve the riddle of death 
by dying than we solve the problem of life 



AUTOMATIC WRITING 239 

by being born. Take my own case — I was 
always a seeker, until it seemed to me at 
times as if the quest was more to me than the 
prize. Only the attainments of my search 
were generally like rainbow gold, always 
beyond and afar. It is not all clear; I seek 
still, only with a confirmed optimism more 
perfect and beautiful than any we imagined 
before. / am not oppressed with the desire 
that animates some of us to share our knowledge 
or optimism with you all before the time. You 
know who feels like that ; but I am content that 
you should wait. The solution of the Great 
Problem I could not give you — I am still very 
far away from it. And the abiding knowledge 
of the inherent truth and beauty into which 
all the inevitable uglinesses of existence finally 
resolve themselves will be yours in due time." 

Moreover, at this time Mrs. VerralPs as well 
as Mrs. Holland's script produced appropriate 
references to Roden Noel and his poems, 
while each almost simultaneously wrote a 
description of the, to them, unknown poet 
which intimate friends of his pronounced to be 
very characteristic. 

Much has been said by these controls about 
the difficulties which beset them in their 
endeavours to communicate; and we may 
ourselves reasonably infer and conjecture 
much more, without supposing that we have 
by any means fully realized the magnitude 
of the obstacles which they encounter, or 
even, in many respects, the nature of them. 
Amongst those which lie to some extent 



240 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

within the ken of our imagination, the most 
formidable may perhaps be: (1) the impossi- 
bility of securing the complete passivity of the 
mind of the medium whom the communicator 
is using as an instrument, and therefore of 
excluding its influence on the working of his 
own ; (2) the all but total impossibility of tran- 
scending the limits imposed by the medium's 
mental apparatus and intellectual equipment. 

The effects of this first difficulty are obvious 
to anybody who studies the phenomena 
occurring in different automatists under what 
is, or purports to be, the same control, and 
an exceptionally favourable opportunity for 
making such observations is afforded by the 
above-mentioned allied group of automatists 
and controls. If the variations noticeable, 
from medium to medium, in each control- 
ling spirit were eliminated, leaving only the 
features common to all its manifestations, 
we should no doubt discover that the charac- 
teristics which it had really possessed in earth- 
life formed this residuum. But the emerging 
personality would often seem a thing of shreds 
and patches, so closely had it been interwoven 
with that of the medium through which it 
made its way. For, as Sir Oliver Lodge 
remarks : " The process of communication 
is sophisticated by many influences, so that it 
is very difficult, perhaps at present impossible, 
to disentangle and exhibit clearly the part 
that each plays." 

This difficulty is a difficulty indeed. In the 
case of an entranced medium, whose spirit 



AUTOMATIC WRITING 241 

is supposed to withdraw temporarily from 
the organism, of which another spirit takes 
possession, the situation has some resemblance 
to that of a stream, with its main current 
deflected, and another stream turned into its 
channel. The new stream will of course be 
bounded by the old channel, and its waters 
tinged by the pools which lie in its bed, and 
the deposits over which it flows. But when 
the medium is not entranced, the analogy 
points rather to those fresh-water springs 
which sometimes rise in the sea. Here the 
separateness of the waters is generally sure 
to be far more transient and less complete. 
Only when the spring wells up with unwonted 
force and copiousness does it reach the surface 
free from briny admixture. And, in fact, 
something about the manner in which the 
more characteristic of the communications 
often come, does suggest a sudden uprush of 
this kind through an always resisting and 
encroaching element. 

Then, as for the second great difficulty 
which confronts the communicator, entailed 
upon him by the limitations of the automatist, 
we may imagine some faint resemblance 
between his plight and that of a writer 
constrained to compose an abstruse treatise in 
words of three letters, or in those occurring 
on some chance scrap of print. The smaller 
and sillier the scrap, the more fatal will he 
find his restrictions, just as the control's 
power of expressing himself is diminished 
by the illiteracy and unintelligence of the 



242 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

medium. We must allow likewise for the 
possibility, if not probability, of other still 
more baffling impediments, unimaginable by 
us in our ignorance of what the conditions 
are in the spirit-world. Thus, there is reason 
to believe that an intelligent communicator 
is sometimes, when communicating, in a more 
or less dazed and drowsy condition, which 
gives his message the character merely of a 
fantastic dream. 

Curious glimpses, by the way, may some- 
times be gained from the confused and in- 
coherent, but often very interesting utter- 
ances of Mrs. Piper, as she begins to waken 
half-dazed from her trance. She always 
represents herself as returning most reluct- 
antly from surroundings compared with which 
her earthly abode appears dark and dismal, 
and shared by inhabitants who are decidedly 
unprepossessing. They seem to her, she says, 
like black people. On one occasion, indeed, 
she addressed her sitters with a quaint and 
uncompromising frankness : " I don't want 
you — I want the other place — you look 
funny. . . . You are ugly, to say the least. 
I never ! I wouldn't look like you. . . . Are 
you alive?" she added; "there are others 
more alive than you are up there." More 
significantly, she often speaks of being sur- 
rounded on her departure by those who are 
endeavouring to communicate with this 
world, and who seize the opportunity of 
impressing upon her some brief message, 
which she has at times been able to deliver, 



AUTOMATIC WRITING 243 

as a valuable bit of evidence, before the 
fleeting recollection of her trance-experiences 
has faded. 

Dr. Hodgson began his investigation of 
Mrs. Piper's trance-utterances as a thorough 
sceptic, but after many years of unremitting 
and critical investigation, testing one hypo- 
thesis after another, he was finally driven 
to the conclusion " that the chief ' com- 
municators ' are veritably the personalities 
that they claim to be, and that they have 
survived the change we call death." Though 
some of us may be unable fully to share 
Dr. Hodgson's conviction, we must remember 
that his experience and knowledge was larger 
than ours, and at any rate we may dismiss the 
futile criticism of those who have not spent 
as many minutes as he spent years in the 
study of this subject. Dr. Hodgson's opinion, 
it may be added, is now shared by many 
other able inquirers, who have made a search- 
ing and impartial investigation of the evidence 
which has accumulated since his death. 

Moreover, when appraising the most recent 
testimony in favour of life after death, we 
should remember that the evidence is being 
constantly strengthened, not by accumula- 
tion merely, but by increased cogency and 
purposefulness. If we review the past ten 
years, we cannot fail to be struck by the 
steadily growing clearness of attempts on 
the part of those who have passed over to 
improve and multiply methods of communi- 
cation. These efforts are seconded on our 



244 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

side with admirable industry, patience and 
tact, alike by automatists and students of 
psychical phenomena, and the results come 
daily to light. At the present time, the 
Society for Psychical Research has just pub- 
lished the details of some very remarkable 
incidents which took place in the course of 
1910. Writing of these, Sir Oliver Lodge 
says : " He [the scientific explorer] feels 
secure and happy in his advance only when 
one and the same hypothesis will account 
for everything — both old and new — which 
he encounters. The one hypothesis which 
seems to me most nearly to satisfy that con- 
dition in this case, is that we are in indirect 
touch with some part of the surviving person- 
ality of a scholar, and that scholar F. W. H. 
Myers." 

All things considered, it seems a not wholly 
extravagant conjecture that another ten years 
may put us in possession of more knowledge 
about the means whereby these supernormal 
messages are conveyed to us, and therefore 
in more favourable circumstances for re- 
ceiving them. Hitherto our experiences on 
the subject have certainly tended to correct 
the popular notion of a ghost as a being 
whose coming and going is very much a matter 
of its own casual caprice, barred by nothing, 
except, perhaps, some form of exorcism. And 
they have heightened our appreciation of the 
insight shown by Wordsworth in making his 
afflicted Margaret say — 



AUTOMATIC WRITING 245 

te I look for ghosts, but none will force 
Their way to me," 

little disposed as we may be to draw her 
despairing conclusion — 

" 3 Tis falsely said 
That there was ever intercourse 
Between the living and the dead. 1 ' 

Certainly, for our own part, we believe 
there is some active intelligence at work 
behind, and apart from, the automatist, an 
intelligence which is more like the deceased 
person it professes to be than that of any 
other we can imagine. And though the 
intelligence is provokingly irritating in the 
way it evades simple direct replies to questions, 
yet it is difficult to find any other solution to 
the problem of these scripts and cross-corre- 
spondences than that there is an attempt at 
intelligent co-operation between certain dis- 
embodied minds and our own. 

But does the evidence afford us proof of 
immortality ? Obviously it cannot ; nor can 
any investigations yield scientific proof of 
that larger, higher, and enduring life which 
we desire and mean by immortality. Some 
of the evidence, indeed, seems rather to indi- 
cate a more or less truncated personality, a 
fragment of earthly memories, partly roused 
by, and mainly connected with, those through 
and to whom the communications come; to 
picture, in fact, a dim, wraith-like survival 
such as that imagined by Homer when he 
made Achilles in the underworld declare that 
he would rather serve as a hireling among the 



246 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

living than reign a king among the dead. 
The intelligent and characteristic messages, 
however, suggest that the vague ones are 
due to the fading and dissolving of earthly 
memories and ties, as the departed become 
more absorbed in their new life, the very 
nature of which we are in our present state 
incapable of conceiving. Our own limitations, 
in fact, make it impossible for the evidence 
to convey the assurance that we are communi- 
cating with what is best and noblest in those 
who have passed into the unseen. 

In fine, psychical research, though it may 
strengthen the foundations, cannot take the 
place of religion, using in its widest sense that 
much-abused word. For, after all, it deals 
with the external, though it be in an unseen 
world; and its chief value lies in the fulfil- 
ment of its work, whereby it reveals to us 
the inadequacy of the external, either here 
or hereafter, to satisfy the life of the soul. 
The psychical order is not the spiritual order, 
but a stepping-stone in the ascent of the soul 
to its own self-apprehension, its conscious 
sharing in the eternal divine life, of which 
Frederic Myers thus foretells — 

e( And from thee, o'er some lucid ocean-rim, 
The phantom Past shall as a shadow flee ; 
And thou he in the Spirit, and everything 
Born in the God that shall he born in thee," 



Note. — It is desirable to mention that the 
Society for Psychical Research (referred to 
as the S.P.R. in the foregoing pages) has no 
collective opinion for or against the existence 
of the supernormal phenomena discussed in 
this little book. In fact the Council of that 
Society welcomes the severest instructive 
criticism of the evidence adduced in any of its 
publications. As Mr. Andrew Lang pointed 
out in his recent Presidential address : " The 
Society, as such, has no views, no beliefs, no 
hypotheses, except, perhaps, the opinion that 
there is an open field of inquiry; that not all 
the faculties and potentialities of man have 
been studied and explained up to date, in 
terms of nerve and brain." 

The Presidents of the Society have been as 
follows : — Professor Henry Sidgwick, D.C.L., 
Litt.D. ; Professor Balfour Stewart, LL.D., 
F.R.S. ; Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, M.P., D.C.L., 
F.R.S. ; Professor W. James, of Harvard, 
U.S.A. ; Sir W. Crookes, O.M., D.Sc, F.R.S. ; 
Mr. F. W. H. Myers, late Fellow Trin. Coll., 
Camb. ; Sir Oliver Lodge, D.Sc, LL.D., F.R.S. ; 
Professor W. F. Barrett, F.R.S.; Professor 
C. Richet, M.D. (of Paris) ; Right Hon. 
Gerald W. Balfour, late Fellow Trin. Coll., 
Camb.; Mrs. H. Sidgwick, D.Litt., LL.D.; 
Mr. H. A. Smith; Hon. Treasurer S.P.R., 
Mr. Andrew Lang, M.A., LL.D. 



247 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

So numerous are the books and papers which have been 
published at home and abroad on the subject matter of this 
book, that only a very brief outline can be given of some of 
the modern and more instructive English books dealing with 
psychical research. 

An extensive and valuable collection of English and 
foreign works on psychical research will be found in the 
Edmund Gurney Library, in the rooms of the Society for 
Physical Research. 

Students will find in the publications of the Society for 
Psychical Research a wealth of information upon, as well as 
a critical examination of, alleged supernormal phenomena. 
These publications can be obtained from the rooms of the 
Society, 20, Hanover Square, London, W. Among them 
are :- — 

Proceedings of the S.P.R, Vols. I to XXV (1882-1911). 
Journal of the S.P.R, Vols. I to XIV (1884-1911). 

The journal is only issued to members and associates of 
the Society. 

Phantasms of the Living, 2 vols., by E. Gurney, F. W. H. 
Myers and F. Podmore. 

Proceedings of the American S.P.R. , Vols. I to VI. 

Journal of the American S.P.R., Vols. I. to V. 

Combined Index to the above down to the year 1900. 

Human Personality, 2 vols. , by F. W. H. Myers, late Fellow 
of Trin. Coll., Camb. (Longmans & Co.). 
An abridgment in one volume by Mr. Leo Myers has also 
been published. This magnum opus contains the substance 
of the Society's investigations down to the time of the 
author's death in January 1901, and is the standard text-book 
on psychical research. 

249 



250 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Science and a Future Life, by F. W. H. Myers (Longmans 
& Co.). 
A suggestive and eloquent essay. 

A Modern Priestess of Isis, by V. S. Solovyoff, abridged 
and translated from the Russian by Walter Leaf, 
Litt.D. (Longmans & Co.). 

This translation was made on behalf of the S.P.R. by Dr. 
Leaf, to whom a grateful acknowledgment is made in a 
prefatory note by Prof. H. Sidgwick. The book is an 
entertaining and valuable supplement to the exposure of the 
claims made by Madame Blavatsky, the result of an in- 
vestigation undertaken for the S.P.R. by Dr. Hodgson. 
Prof. Sidgwick writes, " Mr. Solovyoffs vivid description of 
the mingled qualities of her [Mme. Blavatsky's] nature — 
her supple craft and reckless audacity, her intellectual vigour 
and elastic vitality, her genuine bonhomie, affectionateness 
and (on occasions) persuasive pathos," afford some explana- 
tion of the remarkable success of her imposture and also 
furnish a most interesting psychological study. 

Personality and Telepathy, by F. C. Constable, M.A. (Kegan 
Paul, Trench & Co.). 
A work recently published, based on Kant's philosophy 
and advocating the view that telepathy is inexplicable except 
on the assumption that human personality is a partial and 
mediate manifestation in this world of a spiritual or 
intuitive self. 

Hypnotism and Suggestion, 5th ed., by C. Lloyd Ttjckey, 
M.D. (Balliere & Co.). 

This is a standard medical work on psycho-therapeutics 
or treatment by hypnotism and suggestion, and records 
numerous cases in the author's practice. 

Hypnotism: its History, Practice, and Theory, by Milne 
Bramwell, M.D. (Grant Richards). 
Also a standard work of great value. 

The Influence of the Mind upon the Body, by D. Hack Tuke, 
M.D. (Churchill & Co.). 

A classical and early work on this important subject ; now 
so widely recognized in psycho-therapeutic treatment. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 251 

The Survival of Man, by Sir Oliver Lodge (Methuen & Co.). 
An outline of the author's investigations on psychical 
research, more especially with regard to automatic writing 
and contemporary records, which have convinced him that 
trustworthy evidence exists on behalf of human survival of 
bodily death. 

On the Threshold of a New World of Thought, by W. F. 
Barrett (Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. ). 

A new and revised edition is in preparation. 

The author points out the many far-reaching implications 
involved in the acceptance of telepathy, and discusses the 
question of spiritualism from a scientific and religious point 
of view. 

Mors Janua Vitas, by H. A. Dallas, with an introduction by 
Prof. Barrett (W. Rider & Son). 

The object of this book is to present a summary of the 
recent evidence for survival, so far as it relates to Mr. 
F. W. H. Myers. It is written in a thoughtful and reverent 
spirit. 

Modem Spiritualism: a History and a Criticism, by 
F. Podmore, 2 vols. (Methuen & Co.). 
An important and able contribution to this subject from 
an agnostic point of view. 

Apparitions and Thought Transference, by the same Author. 
Contemporary Science Series (Walter Scott & Co.). 

A summary and discussion of the evidence on behalf of 
telepathy and visual hallucinations. 

Mesmerism and Christian Science, by the same Author 
(Methuen & Co.). 

An excellent account of the history of mesmerism and its 
phenomena, together with a discussion of the development of 
mental healing in the United States. . 

Cock Lane and Common Sense, by Andrew Lang, M.A., 
LL.D. (Longmans & Co.). 

Contains valuable chapters on comparative psychical 
research and the ghost-theory of the origin of religions. 
Mr. Lang shows how each antagonist calmly ignores 
everything which docs not fit in with his own theory. 



252 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Making of Religion, by the same Author (Longmans 
& Co.). 
A volume with appendices full of interest to students of 
psychical research. The author compares primitive and 
savage beliefs in the existence of many supernormal phe- 
nomena with modern evidence of the same, and shows the 
need of modifying current anthropological and religious 
theories in the light of modern knowledge. 

Among older works of interest may be mentioned the 
brilliant preface written by Professor A. De Morgan to his 
wife's book, entitled From Matter to Spirit; also The Truths 
contained in Popular Superstitions, by H. Mayo, M.D., F.R.S., 
etc., a series of letters showing a courageous and original 
thinker. 



INDEX 



Adventure, An, book so called, 200 

Antoinette, Marie, hallucinations 
of, 201 

Apparitions, 119-129 ; see Halluci- 
nations 

Automatic writing, 219 et seq. 

Autoscopes, definition and various 
forms of, 28 

Aymar, Jacques, 172 

Baguette Bivinatoire, 26 
Bertrand, Dr. A., on somnam* 

bulism, 86 
Bishop, Mr. I., experiments with, 



Bobbie, Mr., experiments with 

clairvoyants, 159 
Bowsing, history of, 168 

„ for mineral lodes, 169 
„ for water, 170 et seq. .... 
„ origin of wood, 170 
„ nature of faculty, 182 
Breams, lost articles found 
through dreams, 
134-137 
„ revival of memory in, 

134 
„ apparent clairvoyance 

in, 139 

Bi^Dr., hypnotic experiments, Edgeworth, Prof., calculations by, 



Bramwell, Dr. Milne, hypnotic 
experiments,. 91 

Calculating boys, 37 

Census of hallucinations, 116 

Clairvoyance, telepathic, 140 

,, in crystal-gazing,147 

,, travelling, 158 

,, Swedenborg's, 154 

„ during hypnotic 

trance, 156-159 
,, in normal state, 160 

„ of Rev. C. Sanders, 

161-165 
Coincidences, study of, 115 
Community of sensation, 65, 70, 77 
Creery, experiments with the 

Misses, 53-63 
Crookes, Sir W., investigations by, 

216 
Cross-correspondence, 228 
Crystal-gazing, 141 

Divining-rod, so called, 26, 167 
et teq. 



253 



Elliotson, Dr., and mesmerism, 87 
Esdaile, Dr., painless operations 
under mesmerism, 87 

Flournoy, Prof., book on secondary 

personality, 201 
Fraud in spiritualistic mediums, 

212 

Ghosts, see Hallucinations 
Gurney, Edmund, 33, 114 

„ experiments by, 77, 113 
„ census of hallucinations, 
116 
Guthrie, Malcolm, experiments on 
thought-transference, 65-68 

Hallucinations, types of, 111 

„ veridical or truth- 

telling, 112 
„ census of, 116 

„ visual cases of, 118- 

122 
„ auditory, 123, 131 

„ in crystal-gazing, 

144 et seq. 



254 



INDEX 



Hauntings, remarkable cases of, 
189, 195 
„ other cases of, 193, 194 

„ theories to account 

for, 199 

„ illusory cases, 201 

Hei-dman, Prof., experiments on 

thought-transference, 65 
Hodgson, Dr., experiments by, 2S4 
„ result of investiga- 
tions of Mrs. 
Piper, 242 
Holland, Mrs., automatic writing, 

230-233 
Home, D. D., phenomena obtained 

through, 216, 217 

Human Personality, Mr. Myers, 

work on, 32 

„ „ nature of, 35 

Hypnotism, therapeutic effects of, 

89-90 

„ appreciation of time, 

91 
„ hallucinations evoked 

by, 95 
Hyslop, Prof., experiments, by, 22 

Joan of Arc, voices of, 220 
Johnson, Miss A., experiments by, 
80 
„ , discovery of cross- 

correspondence, 
228, 231 

Lang, Andrew, case of crystal- 
gazing investi- 
gated by, 145 

\ „ „ on widespread 

belief in clair- 
voyance, 153 

Lodge, Sir Oliver, experiments by, 
66 
„ „ opinion of, on 

survival, 244 

Medium, in physical and psychical 
phenomena, 40, 212 

Memory, revival of, in dreams, 
134-137 

Mesmerism, history of, 83 

„ phenomena associated 

with, 86 

Miles, Miss, experiments on tele- 
pathy, 97 et seg. 

Mitchell, Dr., hypnotic experi- 
ments by, 92 



Moses, Rev. W. S., visual halluci- 
nation of, 222 
„ „ „ automatic writ- 

ing by, 223- 
225 
Motor-automatism, definition of, 

22 
Muscle-reading, 47 
Myers, F. W. H., on human person- 
ality, 32 
, s „ messages claiming 

to come from, 
229-233 

Paquet, Mrs., a vision seen by, 126 
Pendulum, magic, or pendule 
explorateur, 20-27 
„ explanation of, 21 

„ paper on, in Phil. 

Trans., 24 
Phantasms of the Living, book on, 
114 
„ cases of, 113, 123, 203 

„ of the dead, 119, 121, 

124-131 
Piper, Mrs., trance communica- 
tions, 22G, 229 
Poltergeists, meaning of term, 205 

„ cases of, 206-209 

Psychical Research Society, aims 
of, 34 
„ „ range of, 10 

„ „ eminent 

adherents 
of, 41 
„ „ foundation 

of, 55 
„ „ presidents 

of, 247 

Radnor, Lady, case recorded by, 

149 
Ramsden, Miss, experiments on 

telepathy, 97-103 
Religion and psychical research, 

11, 246 
Richet, Prof. C, case attested by, 

152 
Romanes, G. J., experiments by, 

46-49 

Second sight, 154 

Sidgwick,Prof. H., experiments on 
thought-trans- 
ference, 79, 80 
„ „ quotation from 

address by, G2 



INDEX 



255 



Sidgwick, Prof. H., presidency of 
S.P.R., 33, 247 
„ census of hallu- 
cinations, 116 
Mrs. H., president and 
hou. sec. 
S.P.R., 33 
„ experiments 

by, 79, 80 
,, discussion of 

case by, 126 
„ on haunted 

houses, 195 
Sleep, revival of memory in, 134 

„ perception in, 138 
Sleeping preacher, the, 161 
Socrates, demon of, 220 
Somnambulism, 86 
Spiritualistic phenomena dis. 
cussed, 211, 214 
„ mediums, 212 

Subliminal self, 23, 34-40 
Suggestion, influence of, 85, 88-90 

,, post-hypnotic, 95 

Supernatural, use and abuse of 

term, 11-13 
Superstition, definition of, 15 
Supraliminal, self -definition of, 39 
Survival of bodily death, evidence 

for, 242-246 
Swedenborg, cases of clairvoyance, 
154 

Telepathy, definition of, 68 
„ implications of, 69 

„ evidence for cumula- 

tive, 107 



Telepathy, over long distances, 
96-107 
„ how propagated, un- 

known, 107 
Telaesthesia, definition of, 186 
Telegnosis, definition of, 161 
Telekinetic phenomena, definition 

of, 214 
Telepathic clairvoyance, 140 
Teresa, St., and dowsing, 171 
Thought-reading, so-called, 44 et 

seq. 
Thought-transference in normal 
state, 54 
et seq. 
„ „ in hypnotic 

state, 70 
et seq. 
„ „ see Telepathy 

Time, appreciation of, in hypnotic 

trance, 91 
Towns, apparition of Captain, 128 
Trance communications, difficul- 
ties of, 240 

Unconscious muscular action, 21 
et seq. 

Visions, see Hallucination 

Wesley, Rev. S., and haunting, 207 

Willing game, 44 

Writing, automatic, 220 et seq. 

Zahoris, the, 185 
Zanci^s, the, 50 
Zoist, the, 87, 157 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnes.um Oxide 
Treatment Date: Nov. 2004 

PreservationTechnologies 

ll^n!^ .N PAPER PRBSBRVAT.ON 



;wV-fo«AD™.N PAP- PRBSBRVAT.cn 

1 1 1 Thomson Park 
Cranberry To\ 
(724)779-211 



111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




013 500 608 7 9 



